The Riau Capital Investment and Regional Promotion Agency (BPMPD) has come under fire from the Riau Legislative Council, which criticized the agency's plan to send a group of its employees to Europe to promote investment in the region.
Councilors said the agency's attempt would be fruitless just like any of its previous attempts.
A member of the council's Commission B for the economy, Syamsul Hidayah Kahar, said such an initiative had been carried out every year but only ever resulted in memorandum of understandings (MoU) being signed, and never any realized investments or significant impact on investment in the province.
"Out of a number of promotional trips to the five continents, only a few resulted in MoUs, but concrete outcomes remain to be seen," he told The Jakarta Post Thursday.
"What outcomes are they actually hoping to achieve on their next overseas promotional trip to Europe anyway?" he said.
Syamsul said he did not mind approving the agency's planned trip, as long as it brought palpable benefits to Riau.
"They should spend any 2009 budget surplus on infrastructure rather than wasting it *on junkets*," he said.
Another commission member, Bambang Tri Wahyono, said he suspected the agency had organized the promotional junket to cover up a holiday trip.
"The planned trip is inappropriate and must be cancelled," he said.
He said a trip with such a large number of delegates was unnecessary as the region could be promoted by distributing brochures to other countries through Indonesian embassies for example.
"In this era of information technology, the internet is adequate for promotional purposes. Information is only one click away, and it's much cheaper," said Bambang.
Despite the agency being criticized, the agency's head Feisal Qomar Karim insisted the planned overseas trip -the only this year- could not be cancelled.
"There's a division in the Riau BPMPD's organizational structure that handles overseas promotions. What will employees *of that division* do if this overseas promotion *plan* is cancelled?" he said, adding the agency had made sure the planned trip would be "as efficient as possible".
Feisal said the Netherlands would definitely on the list of countries on the trip, given Dutch Ambassador to Indonesia Nikolaos van Dam's recent invitation, despite the schedule not being completed yet.
He said the agency planned to invite investors to develop the downstream oil palm-based and fisheries industries in Riau during their trip.
In response to Bambang's suggestion investment promotion could be done by using the internet, Feisal said investors were highly unlikely to respond immediately using this media.
"We could lose out to other provinces if we don't go, as other provinces are having face-to-face meetings with potential investors," Feisal said.
