Indonesia is joining its neighbors in an attempt to be a regional information technology hub with the announcement of a ‘Cybercity’ to be situated in the capital, Jakarta. The brainchild of entrepreneur Edward Soeryadjaya, the project will be funded by the Indonesian and Japanese governments and 57 Japanese private-sector investors including Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Toyota and the Industrial Bank of Japan. Cybercity will be a center for e-commerce, software research and development, telecommunications and multimedia, Soeryadjaya said. It will also act as an incubator for emerging Indonesian ‘technopreneurs’ and become an education center for information technology.
Cybercity will be built on the 450-hectare site of the old Kemayoran airport and will be an integrated development with six zones: the Cybercity nucleus, light industry, education and training, hotel and residential use and recreation and entertainment.
Soeryadjaya said he will be using his Singapore-based listed L&M Group Investment Ltd as a catalyst for some of the multimedia projects. But the primary vehicle to create Cybercity will be PT Jakarta International Trade Fair Corporation (JITC), a 57:43 joint venture between the Indonesian and Japanese sides. The Japanese government is coming in, not as a loan giver, but as an equity holder. It means they are committing themselves for the very long term, Soeryadjaya said.
Soeryadjaya, who holds about 40% of the total Indonesian stake in the project, is reported to be close to both new President Abdurrahman Wahid and Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Cybercity represents a business comeback for him and coincides with the re-emergence of the Soeryadjaya family’s flagship business, PT Astra, which has suffered a severe decline in fortunes in recent years.
