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Coal-fired power plant companies knee-deep in lobbying with little to no transparency: TII
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The five chimneys of the 4,025-MW Suralaya coal-fired power plant, one of the largest of its kind in Indonesia, tower above Cilegon city in Banten province in September 2019. (JP/Norman Harsono)
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ower plant companies are knee-deep in political influencing and lobbying with little to no transparency, resulting in entrenched coal interests in Indonesia’s energy agenda amid a push for renewables, a recent report by Transparency International Indonesia (TII) has suggested.
TII’s Corporate Political Engagement Index (CPEI) looked into the political transparency of 90 companies involved in the development of coal-fired power plants. These include SOEs, multinationals and publicly listed companies that either invested in, developed or operated the plants.
It measured five categories: how responsible their lobbying was, whether they had a control environment over political engagement, whether they made political donations or had procedures for transparent donations, whether they allowed the revolving door between business and the public sector, and whether information on their political activities was accessible to the public.
Almost all companies have no strict internal policies regulating a control environment, political donations and responsible lobbying, the report said.
“This may seem normal but should not be because Indonesia does not have any regulations about responsible lobbying yet, while other countries already have,” TII researcher Belicia Angelica said on Thursday during the launch of the report.
TII also found that almost all companies allowed the revolving door, or employing former public officials shortly after they left policy-making positions that may help the companies with future lobbying.
The majority of the companies were lacking in transparency to the public, with 66 companies out of 90 either having no publicly available websites or having ones that contained no relevant information about their political activities.
