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Indonesia Clears Railway Investment From Mideast

From the Wall Street Journal

JAKARTA, Indonesia—Government officials said they had cleared a regulatory logjam holding up $1 billion in funding from Middle East investors for a railroad project, a major step forward for a nation that has failed in recent years to attract large amounts of foreign capital because of bureaucratic hurdles.

Investors including the United Arab Emirates and Dubai-based Trimex Group plan to begin construction early next year on a railway in Indonesia's East Kalimantan province, the Indonesian Investment Coordinating Board said Tuesday. MEC Infrastructure, a joint venture of Trimex's MEC Holdings and the U.A.E. government of Ras al Khaimah, plan to complete the railway in 2012.

The 130-kilometer track, the first private railway in Indonesia, will link the Muara Wahau coal mine in East Kalimantan's East Kutai district with the coast, where MEC Holdings is spending $250 million on a new port. The coal mine is being developed by MEC Coal, another joint venture of MEC Holdings and Ras al Khaimah.

The project is part of $5 billion in investments by the group and India's state-owned National Aluminum Co., the investment board said. The mine and railway are central to a complex of facilities that will also include a coal-fired power plant, an aluminum smelter, a fertilizer plant and a port terminal.

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