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em>Inadequate infrastructure remains one of the major problems in doing business in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy. For France-based Alstom, a global company in the infrastructure market for power generation, power transmission and rail transport, such a situation could create opportunities for its future growth. Through its local subsidiary, PT Alstom Indonesia has found its ground in the domestic market with its business lines — power, grid and transport. Below are excerpts from The Jakarta Post’s Linda Yulisman’s interview with Edward Thiessen, the country president of Alstom Indonesia.

Question: How do you expect to grow your business in Indonesia in the next few years?

Answer: There is a lot of improvement going on the grid in Indonesia in all areas. So, that has become a very steady business of small projects and other larger ones. One of the areas we would grow upon is the grid side, perhaps the Sumatra-Java project. PLN is pre-qualifying contracts for that right now, so we hope to pre-qualify and bid for that. That is large project that will really help us grow here.

On the power business, right now we are working on business development for pre-qualification for a number of geothermal projects and we see a huge pipeline of projects. They are a little bit slow moving. Some have to do with bureaucracy; some have to do with technical issues. It is a combination of both, I would say, but I think it is a very promising area and we built our first geothermal power plant in Indonesia back in 2000. It has been running extremely well since then in Lahendong, North Sulawesi.

What other projects do you consider prospective in the future?

I think we are looking at certain coal projects. We also like to work on gas projects [natural gas-fired power plants] here.

We are working on tenders right now for components for small gas-fired power plants.

We also have an ocean energy project, which we’re currently developing. We also have wind products. We have recently secured a project in France for 246-megawatt wind turbine. If we have wind projects here, we would also like to look at that.

How do you see the opportunities in the domestic market?

Indonesia is a great market because you receive a 6.5 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] growth. Power demand is usually linked to the GDP growth. In most developing countries, you might see power demand growth rising at the rate of 1.5 times to GDP growth

What obstacles can hinder expansion of power generation sector?

Some of the coal projects that PLN tendered are not provided with sovereign guarantee.

Multinational banks involving in the projects want to see the government support. PLN is already subsidized so I don’t think it has a high risk. However, the banks might look at it in a different way. So, I think the projects might go more smoothly with government support. Government has provided sovereign guarantees for some projects, but not for all. I am not sure why some receive it and others do not.