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riven by the country’s stable economic growth and huge population, representatives of 17 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from a wide array of sectors from the United States are exploring business opportunities in Indonesia.

The firms’ representatives visited Jakarta on Monday as part of an annual program organized by the US Department of Commerce, meeting potential local business partners in pharmaceuticals, ports and shipbuilding, health care and information services, among others.

The trade mission, which is marking its fifth year and previously visited Turkey, Poland, Brazil and Mexico, has reportedly generated over than US$100 million worth of exports for US firms taking part in it.

Deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Jakarta Ted Osius said on Monday that Indonesia, with its population of 237 million, equal to 46 percent of the population in Southeast Asia, and with an economy growing at more than 6 percent per year, offered a good opportunity for US SMEs.

“Some of the big companies are already here. It’s a good opportunity to introduce some smaller and medium-sized companies to the Indonesian market that they might not know well,” he told a press conference after opening a business forum linking the US firms and local partners in Jakarta.

Apart from increasing trade with Indonesia, a few of the firms expressed interest in investing in the infrastructure, energy, aviation, transportation, and oil and gas sectors in Indonesia, Osius added.

In February, 35 executives from big US companies such as Caterpillar, Ford Motor Company, Freeport, IBM and Monsanto visited Indonesia under the US-ASEAN Business Council mission. Some of those companies have already invested in Indonesia.

Caterpillar, for example, has set up a $150 million plant in Batam, Riau Islands, to fulfill rising demand for the heavy equipment that is necessary for infrastructure, plantation and mining projects in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

The US has long been one of Indonesia’s largest investors and last year it was the third biggest investor in the nation.

US firms invested $1.5 billion, accounting for 7.78 percent of total foreign investment in the country in 2011.

In terms of trade, Indonesia exported $15.69 billion in commodities and goods to the US, its third-biggest export destination, and imported $10.81 billion worth of goods last year.

Janice C Barlow, the senior international trade specialist at the US Department of Commerce who leads the mission, said that SMEs, which represent more than 90 percent of the business entities in the US, were expected to boost their exports to new markets, including Indonesia, amid a slowing economy back home.

“There’re a lot of SMEs in the United States [...] We do believe that working with the SMEs will help our economy,” she told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a business-to-business meeting.

John Pitts, the global sales and marketing manager at Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical firm Ackley Machine Corporation, anticipated higher exports for pharmaceutical products in Indonesia, where the firm saw better growth potential, in addition to other emerging countries in Asia, such China and India.

The firm currently sells its products to the Indonesian plant of German pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim in Bogor, West Java. “We want to get in early to build some relationships and we need to establish a business partner here in Indonesia,” he said, adding that the firm anticipated to boost its sales exponentially to a few million dollars per year once its local representative was appointed.