 infrastructure is one of the major setback to the growth and economic development of this region and there is a report by ADB back in 2010 that Asia requires $8 trillion to be invested between 2010 and 2020 if the region will grow economically and infrastructure problem is something that Asian countries all currently face and particularly so in Indonesia as a matter of fact when we talk about infrastructure particularly in Indonesia this topic has probably been discussed more than the number of infrastructure projects have been implemented and it has plagued this country for the last 10 years or more and the present government the Jokowi government has made it his government's administration's priority to speed up infrastructure development and projects for example in the next five years have plans to build 24 seaports 15 airports 35,000 megawatts power plants dams road railways and what we call sea tolls and this is this is not something new this is something that Indonesia has been plagued like I said in the last decade or so now the question is well will it be implementable where does the money come from and what kind of infrastructure do we actually need to build now of course money is a major issue I mean we've had talks of public private partnership when it comes to financing infrastructure but it needs to be seen because perhaps we can come up with new models of public private partnership because it obviously something has not worked because this is not a new way of financing and there's also a talk of a new financing channel the Asian infrastructure investment bank this is initiated by China this would be something that we can explore will AIIB can actually speed up infrastructure development in the region and also what we need to focus on is when we actually build infrastructure because it does impact environment the people the cities and so on and so forth there's also the question of what type of infrastructure in terms of sustainability environmental impact social impact and so on and so forth so I think hopefully in this morning's discussion we can get some answers on this topic allow me to introduce our panelist this morning we have his Excellency Minister of Energy Thailand Narong Chai Akrasani very good morning to you minister welcome to Jakarta and Samir Brikko all the way from the United Kingdom Samir is a Chief Executive Officer for a McFoster wheeler in the United Kingdom very good morning to you Samir and John Kurtz is a familiar face to us in Indonesia head client service Asia global head diversity and inclusion of ATQ in Indonesia very good morning to you John and we have Yasuo Tanabe Vice President Executive Officer Hitachi Japan there you are very good morning Yasuo-san and with Noordana President Director Group Chief Executive Officer from Indika Energy and last but not least by Eddie Satyawam President Southeast Asia the Dow Chemical Company Singapore I feel I'm completely surrounded by men no I'm enjoying it okay well let's start with an open question for everybody which is how can infrastructure development in Asia be accelerated through better financing conditions let's start with you minister and perhaps you could also share with us your experience thank you thank you thank you for the session and thank you for the title pumping very appropriate title need for an energy man no no no infrastructure man I remember similar to to Indonesia in 2003 we had a big conference in Bangkok about a number of infrastructure projects up to today very few have been implemented so sounds familiar the realization the priority of infrastructure I think it's everywhere in Asia in Southeast Asia but actions long overdue now why it is that now you have raised the question about finance yes but not really I'm a finance man you know money is easy to find project development yes but manageable implementation yes absolutely that is the key issue how do we get things implemented and that has a lot to do with politics also the people they think that they have the right to infrastructure some of them think that they should have free access to infrastructure so when we come to infrastructure development and getting private sector involved that's the most important thing that cannot be free in order to be to be financially viable the private sector has to be able to calculate the risk and what is the most important one is the user charges the off taker you know when when a private public private project sold to users if that is sold directly it's often a problem the case we have had has been successful is about in energy projects in Thailand the private sector develop and sell to government at fixed price over a certain period of time then government sell to users so if users use politics to influence government about the charges it is the government that suffer not the investor so that is I think most critical now coming to the financing you know you raise the question about financing and you mentioned this AIB which has had very big coverage in the news very high profile to me to me as a finance person before being energy person I am a finance person today I'm still a finance person you know money is more important than anything else in life you ask anybody they say the same thing they may not admit it but you know inside they say nothing is more important so this AIB is actually only another source of long-term finance in Asia we have limited long-term financing because of the long-term saving is limited because partly due to this life insurance business which is relatively new so for this is AIB is only a new channel for Chinese funds to Asia infrastructure which is welcome very very much welcome because up to now Chinese money usually deposited in the US and I remember one time a few years back when US had that financial crisis it was Alan Greenspan who accused Asia of causing the crisis they said you people Narong Chai you did not know what to do with your money and you gave the money to us Americans so we use your money too much and it caused the crisis for us so if that affects you sorry for you that's what Alan Greenspan said so for this you know I think this is another long-term fund for infrastructure in addition to the long-term fund that would be readily available if you have good projects from the west and from Japan and from traditional financial institution like World Bank and ADB and so on but what we need is really going back to what I said earlier a good project development and you know a very systematic scheme of implementation assuring the yield for investors and that would facilitate public private infrastructure project investment thank you okay thank you very much minister maybe on the point of AIIB I will explore some more too particularly on the impact but at the end of the day it's more it's more than just financing it's actually having a good project it's an attractive project that would give a return of investment obviously to investors Samir let's let's hear from your perspective how to accelerate infrastructure development in this part of the world well I think we do all agree that there are a lot of infrastructure jobs need to be done in order to be able to accelerate the process of the development and also to ensure that we have a minimum maybe of five to six percent GDP growth but it is very difficult actually for many of the countries is that to determine what are the priorities what they need to have because you need to have sepals need to have roads you need to have transportation need to have telecommunication and we do all know that you cannot do all of that actually at the same time so therefore program management is very important project management is very important in order to deliver many of the jobs on time and on budget but if you think about the challenges which we are going through here in the region and if we would like to make some type of a comparison between how the Asian countries are doing versus the OECD you would be seeing that for instance for 1000 people so you see the roads are 10 kilometers here versus maybe 200 kilometers in the OECD countries it's 0.25 kilometers per 1000 people versus of railway roads versus maybe 200 kilometers if you think about electricity is 72 percent versus 98 percent if you think water is 82 percent versus 99.8 percent so there's quite a big gap now the question is that we cannot do everything at the same time and therefore many of the things need to be thought of in order to say about what will be the priorities so how are we able to implement this type of jobs but also we need to think about how are we able to do a sustainable delivery without compromising on the environment because many of these infrastructure jobs they will be consuming quite a lot of energy they have a quite high carbon footprint high water consumption which will put a quite a lot of pressure and you think about the lessons learned from Europe from US about the journey which has been taking place over the hundred years of industrial evolution you think China in 2011 and 2012 two years only they consumed more cement more cement that what the US has used for 100 years in 2011-2012 this is a major actually impact on the environment it's a major and bring in quite a big imbalance in the system which we have and therefore we need to be very smart and wise about how do we actually put the right priorities and do that but just to give you an example I'm sitting here in this country Indonesia which has been very very focused actually in the past on the power generation which has been a great we had more power generation than what we needed at a certain moment of time because the transmission distribution systems were not there so we got the power generation but now we could not give the electricity to the people so what was the point so that's what I meant with priorities so sometimes we think about that we need to have an airport good we built up the airport but there are no highways to get there so what how's that going to help so that's many of the things which we need to think of and how we optimize the whole infrastructure to give the possibility for the people to thrive okay right John I mean especially with you I think those are very good points by Kun Narung Chai and and certainly Amic Foster Wheeler plays a really important role globally in this in this issue I think from the financing perspective I agree that I mean there's plenty of money in the system in order to in order to finance it I think there's a very important political component that's represented by the AIB and an effort not only by the Chinese but by by other Asian countries and indeed global countries to sort of rebalance institutionally similar to some of the comments that were made from the stage by John Riotti yesterday I think the political social component of this equation is extraordinarily important and extraordinarily difficult and you find projects that get stuck for reasons of social complexity with the with social media now the speed of information travels very quickly global NGOs get involved very early on in projects and we need other examples beyond financing alternatives in order to find projects successful project models that work successful ways of implementing that work and indeed successful ways of balancing environmental impact for example and social impact with the very real infrastructure need and we're obviously sitting in a city in a country where it's where it's a very very important issue and one where the political instinct is there the political will broadly down to the region level has to be has to be improved in order for this to work so I think the the the topic today is extraordinarily important and wide and often it gets overlooked it is not simply a financing issue as you said yeah yeah I think it's great because the the question on sustainability environmental impact is very important but equally important to building in societies as a social impact as well as you know how just the how people actually living in the area are impacted for example in indonesia we've seen projects starting and it has to be stopped because apparently that part of of the land has not been dealt with properly and you know then the infrastructure projects just holds in the middle so I think this is very important questions but Eddie yeah a lot of things has been said by by the three gentlemen what I would like to add is just to echo what the Kuna room I said oh so that a lot of time money is for the issue okay and infrastructure infrastructure project is primarily deal with government and then the project execution the transparency of the of the regulation the contract sanctity so that provide good environment for people to invest because people like you know our colleague from bitachi or from from indica is willing to invest infrastructure power for example okay but if if there is a good environment certainty about rate of return for example the tariff and then the transparency on how we execute this just number one they see the other one is what I would like to point out here is when I see a lot of infrastructure project from government a lot of time they only focus on cost yeah especially the upfront capital cost they forget to look about the the whole cycle of project cost that involves selection of good technology the latest technology we can bring so that the operating cost over 10 15 20 years could be put into consideration yeah so so the assessment of the technology involvement of private sector industry experts from the beginning to make sure that we can bring the latest and best technology to indonesia or to whatever country yeah we would like to to do and last but not least is also environmental impact to to to human and also to the nature this something that sometimes we forget and we put on the back burner and we don't want to repeat the problem that china is facing today they've been building massive infrastructure but in the last two three years now they are also good at facing with massive environmental issues yeah so this is something that probably we can explore later yeah I think it's interesting that you said the government normally focuses on cost you know the the tender part it's very very I think it's also because the government you know it's very short-term thinking whereas an infrastructure is very much a long-term issue and this is something I think when it comes to attractiveness to investors they need that kind of certainty right and one last if I can add is also looking about the whole as a one ecosystem the whole holistic approach so in the last one two days we heard about power generation we need to build 35 000 megawatt of power in indonesia people get excited about oh it's a big number what you know what is the impact on dollars and everything but you talk about only power generation you forget about how to conserve the power the efficiency of the power right so never nobody people talk about for example how we can build more energy efficient building yeah that we can save power consumption that's it yeah how we can for example bring the latest technology I mean I hope probably you probably snook and also bring later the best technology on clean coal technology so the impact environment would be lower yeah so a lot of things that sometimes we forget to assess as part of the holistic view of infrastructure project okay thank you yes your views on how to accelerate yes nowadays infrastructure development is being pursued by the what we what they call PPP method PPP is a kind of fashion but in order for the PPP to function somebody somebody and in most cases government has to take risk that's the most important part of the keys for successful PPP as minister Naroncha said off take off takers commitment take or pay is indispensable in the case of power generation or water or transportations so in Samir's country in UK Hitachi has made a big investment in the PPP scheme for train projects that's because the UK government has take the ridership risk therefore the banking institutions Japanese public banking systems as well as commercial banks are comfortable with that project so they think the project is bankable so this kind of commitment of off takers are important and more in most cases that should be done by the government another thing is the cost as Eddie said in often the case in the bidding government and project owners only think of short-term initial investment but we have to think of total life cycle infrastructure has long life we have been often called up hey Hitachi the the plants we have ordered have problems could you do that but I would say in retrospect you should have been calling to me when it was in bidding so the total life cycle cost including operation and maintenance should be taken care of and for that purpose the technical technical quality is very very important we have been awarded in Poland the very high efficient ultra super critical coal fire thermal power plants in spite of the initial investment cost difference vis-a-vis our competitor our initial investment cost is a little higher than our competitor but the Polish government wisely made a scoreboard on emphasizing the technical technical elements for for the project so that kind of bidding system in considering total life cycle cost is also very very important as Eddie stressed particularly interested in your comment about the government has to take risk I think in in Indonesia that's also part of the challenges you know you have which you know government you know the provincial government and the central government and often they don't actually see things eye to eye and they said you know this is not our responsibility and that's the question of guarantees particularly for investors in order for them to have that confidence in financing the project needs to be addressed wisdom your take on how to accelerate well I think the infrastructure is back on agenda again with the worst financial crisis since a great depression the government worldwide have increased spending on a public project as a part of fiscal stimulus package design to support the economy growth that's that's the reality every new government come out they will use infrastructure as a part to to create a stimulus package in economy this but this is a short term economic stimulus does not address the fundamental economic challenge posed by the condition that the world need more infrastructure the need for infrastructure spending is not the immediate response to the economy to the economic crisis rather it is the result of the inability of infrastructure worldwide to meet the forecast growth in the in demand I think this is the severe budget constraint will limit many a government ability to fund the infrastructure and the private financing will need to come to to fill the gap the private sector can bring a major benefits to government effort to improve public infrastructure but there are inherent conflicts between the objective of a government and those private businesses to resolve such conflict I think the government and private need to align the objective as closely as possible they must develop the best possible triple P arrangement drawing on the most advanced and international examples government should assume important responsibilities such as strengthening the political commitment to to address your question developing a reliable regulatory framework improving a long-term planning project prioritization as well as project governance on the private side I think the private sector need to assume responsibility going beyond just a financial deal structuring they need to focus how to develop solid operating capabilities paying attention to the quality and service provided because it is related to the public services being modern in technology and extremely selective in a deal sourcing to provide the quality of infrastructure I think this is one of the most important aspect that need to be addressed the international institution group estimate that 35 to 40 trillion us dollar is needed over the next 20 years to fund the infrastructure at the best the government can only fund half of it so the private participation will be crucial to play the infrastructure role in the years to come it's yeah it's interesting Indonesia for example we need if I'm not mistaken around 80 billion us dollars a year in order to fund our infrastructure and currently that it's only budgeted for 22 billion us dollars which is actually higher than last year but obviously it's still not adequate and you know the money needs to come from somewhere and this is where we're talking about the private public partnership comes into question but then again the objective of the government for example you mentioned is different from the objective of the private sectors you know what the business is normally what they want is you know good regulations a favorable business climate and you know transparency efficiency and long-term commitment and I think these are these are the issues that that need to be addressed so it's not just the financing but it's all the other aspects as well but financing is important and having the Asian infrastructure investment bank I think it's interesting because one we have China coming into play and you mentioned on this is the political aspect I'm just interested to hear from your minister the impact if and when this financing actually comes into fall given that China has very different sort of methods or ways of doing business as we as we mentioned earlier well we are a subscriber to the chairs of AAIB so we should say a thing to support AAIB our government has already committed to investment as I said before it's definitely useful to have another source of financing definitely no doubt about it but what is definitely important is project development and the way that I think things are being developed these days over the last 10 years governments and private sector they have learned on how to cooperate and develop projects I think now the the projects are much better than before when projects are better than before they are financeable and therefore when this AAIB comes in it comes in in the right time you know if it had come in 10 years ago perhaps those projects would not be financial viable but now I think it's proper but I'd like to mention another aspect you know which has not really been well settled is about the attitude of the NGOs towards infrastructure projects I know that NGOs people don't attend WEF so there's no NGOs in this room so I can say anything about them at the moment for us in Thailand it's not project development it's not financing it's about how to get the NGOs to accept the idea that we can develop projects wisely suitably you know acceptable to them they are the biggest obstacle you know I do not know how to convince NGO perhaps they have a different perspective any of you have idea you know how to convince NGOs I mean just to help the minister on one of the things I mean Amec Foster-Wheel has about 8 000 environmental engineers and what we do actually is that this is part of the business apart from the oil and gas mining and and power but on the environmental side that that's exactly what we do what we do is that we do all the environmental impact studies we do the permitting and the licensing and we do quite a lot of social work the social work which we do is about for instance if you do a project in Canada just not to speak about here the NGOs in Asia but even in Canada when you're doing many of these jobs you need to actually interact with the first nation people to present what is the project is about what are the environmental constraints what are the possibilities of the opportunities and the risk involved in this how do you mitigate the risk and how do you bridge on on the opportunities and by engaging actually with the NGOs because I promise that there are a lot of them in Canada too here and also in the US but engaging with them is actually it's not a bad thing because it is it is shaken away for the sanity of the project and that's a good work which we need to do all of us in order not to end as some of the countries has been doing not to mention them but some of the countries in the world it was so important for them the growth versus actually sustainability and environment and at the end of the day there is a good reason why the party leaders in in China for instance they don't speak about the growth anymore the agenda was changed everybody was speaking about the environment because they felt that okay yeah now we have been putting now 700 megawatt of coal fire power plant every Friday online for the last 25 years but maybe this is not the great thing to continue with and therefore and but also I need to admit that China need to be also rewarded for all the things which they have been doing in implementing renewable energy whether it is solar whether it is also wind farms and others they are not getting as much credit as they should the reason for that because it has been an imbalance in the power generation for instance and okay I think it's good then you need strong government in ASEAN you know which one has strong government does Indonesia have strong government now well I think you know you mentioned minister you actually mentioned about this good project you know but but the the definition of good project should be good for everybody and I think and I don't think you know this is you know because it's not versus NGOs I think if it's a good project everybody would be very happy and now my concern is to pick up I know you have to say good things about AIIP you know but you know having a channel that perhaps is led by a country like you said have lax regulations perhaps on environmental impact and does that give some kind of anxiety John with a new channel and and also like you said a good project should be good for everybody so if you know those aspects need to be discussed like the environmental aspects sustainability and so on yeah I mean I think NGOs play a really important role in the total ecosystem of of projects it's just that the way that that plays out is complex we've talked about the the example of China and how the lack of of voice of NGOs probably caused China to go too far in certain directions the other place of course in the world where it's remarkably easy to to put together large infrastructure projects is the Middle East for similar reasons as well as you know as well as others I think I think there does need to be a new model in the NGO community of finding examples of of effective ways for projects to to operate and effective ways to engage within the the PPP process for example and make sure that the environmental impact studies are done correctly I think the the NGO community is too too attuned to the word no and less attuned to the word how and I and I think that that needs to evolve but I think NGOs play an extraordinarily important role I think on the AIIB and the the the sort of political point I raised I mean there's a lot of of jockeying obviously the ways that that at the government to government level infrastructure funding takes place is why the AIIB became so political in the first place so the are you excited about the AIIB? I think it's the viable financing channel well I think the more alternatives the better which is I think what Minister Nanongchai was talking about and I think competition in the process is also important you know I think the that that political element was interesting just because it was seen it was a counter to the ADB and other institutions and that's why the US government and the Japanese government took the other side and everyone jumped in as a as an alternative but I think I think as an option it's important I think going back to what this panel has been saying I mean I think there are three really crucial you know in Indonesia we always like to sort of take take letters and turn them into to jokes in the way that that Minister Sophie Angelil did yesterday on plan prepare postpone I think the key the key the key to think about in the PPP for what we're talking about today might be you know there's an aspect of political will that needs to to kick in at multiple levels of government there's an extraordinary importance for process excellence and that is really anticipating all the way through a project a project what's going to be needed and and not thinking that it'll be easy to sort out these things later on and then the third that was touched up touched upon is the sophistication of procurement so procurement sophistication in terms of total cost total life cycle cost in terms of really truly competitive procurement processes these these these are really important elements and in one way or another those are those are missing so I don't think it's a I don't think it's about just getting the the NGOs managed I think the NGOs can play a really important part in several of those elements of the letter p yeah and having that project really completely thoroughly researched and the impact to the local communities we've had a recent example for example a port was about to be built in a Chilamaya for example and then you know it was it was supposed to be built yesterday and the money is there which is completely privately funded and so on and so forth and plus you know the the research that from the consultant said that it's completely viable as a deep seaport and then suddenly you know there's actually community resistance for example from the farmers from the fishermen and said you know if we have a port there where we get into fish and this area was actually for rice paddies and we can't have a port with it so what happens is PPP plan prepare and postpone and now it's okay scrap let's start a new and choose another place what I can add on here for for sharing this is that you talk about the NGO right to me is it's more about public education so as soon as as soon as of course the social impact has to be addressed right when you talk about land clearance what about the farmers the fishermen right but after that make sure that you bring in the latest and best technology I mean we play a lot in doubt to make sure that we bring what we can do to the community on in terms of technology so to give example we partner a lot with chinese government in china to build affordable housing you know energy efficient housing yeah we try to also include sustainability aspect green housing yeah on power generation for example we try to improve like I said energy conservation but also distribution as anybody study about how many power loss during the transmission because of you generate so much but at the end due to the grid it's not available or the insulation of the cable is not good enough you have a lot of you know power loss yeah so we as an industry expert try to bring those technology option to the government this is something that we would like to do also with government in Indonesia if they are really open and would like to see the whole project on the whole life cycle instead of only upfront capital costs maybe yes you as an you would like to I mean because Japan obviously in terms of infrastructure you're much you know well ahead and perhaps you could you know give us some of the best practices and examples of how really good infrastructure project can't really get off the ground what is needed you talk about the whole life cycle plus government risk but then the role of the private sector in Japan seems to be quite supportive of that of course in Japan private sectors has been responsible in real works the government whether national or local has provided money based on their planning but the executions by the private sector has been very very responsible and most of Japanese companies are very much long term oriented so if the projects don't function well after the completion that would affect the company's reputations the Japanese companies are very very conscious about this so sometimes Japanese companies often sacrifice the short-term loss for the sake of long-term reputation that's the brand of Japanese businesses Japanese commitment I hope this kind of business culture will prevail in infrastructure development in Asia that's why Japan has such great infrastructure amazing trains good roads I mean it's the envy of the region how about your experience with new being an Indonesian private sector on the public private partnership as well as you know just how attractive is it for private sector well it is it is it is always challenging for the private sectors especially when you live in a country that basically living in democracy China will be able to build the infrastructure because because the government is full control against that in in in democracy like us as well as many Asian country it's always challenging to deal with that you start to involve a lot of stakeholders into it we give you I give you one a good example that we have to deal with NGO we have to deal with the people we invest on on 880 million US dollar IPP project in in in in Chirbon it is it is one of the most sophisticated power generation in in in in in in Indonesia we do the land clearing we compensate everything we built the IPP almost 90 completed and then suddenly few people came to us and then they say well we have a certificate in front of your IPP on the it's basically on the on the sea and then they want us to compensate the the the sea they come out with the certificate I don't know how the government is allowing them to come out with the certificate on the sea by the law the sea is not belonging to the private sector so yeah you you you have to deal with that you need to communicate early as soon as possible you need to create a very comprehensive team it's not easy but but if you get a good determination in how you want to execute the project I think you will be able to do that especially in Indonesia it's always challenging as well as in Thailand probably to get frustrated some time yeah but yeah what is the choice you put up the money already um yeah you have to complete it the challenge is your IRR is different right because your project will be exactly what you say that the project it is a 30 years project um if but do Indonesian companies think long terms I mean Yasuo-san mentioned but you know how Japanese companies they really think long term well well for the Japanese I think to to answer the AIF I was I was involved with that when the Prime Minister Xi Jinping came to China on 2013 to to Indonesia on 2013 it it was the same time with the APEC when the Indonesia host that well I think I think AIF ADB is about the it's about the geopolitical we know that the China is start to slow down the economy the Japanese need to be able to continue to grow but but in my experience in my experience we have a partnership with the Japanese company I think I think they represent a very long term and a strategic investor and they come out with a good quality of technology too in in in my view that that there are a few Indonesian company that that that that look for a long term basis but the key is the key get back again to what is the return what is the return well the Japanese is basically will be able to stay with 6% return but an Indonesia company like us will not be able to stay with 10 or 11% return because the difference of the borrowing cost and the source of funding if you put up your money in Japan probably you get negative return right I think I think I think Indonesian companies and Asian companies in general are very willing to think long term I think you know a lot of the companies involved potentially involved in public private partnerships our family on conglomerates these companies have a very long term time horizon I think it's actually the governments and the procurement process that encourages the short-term thinking and I think you know what these gentlemen are talking about is absolutely right if you look at if you look at the cost of the equipment machinery going in right now then clearly you know to to sort of put a fine point on it Chinese Chinese are going to be cheaper in the short term right the the technology of the Germans of the Japanese of other countries are is going to prevail generally over the longer term Chinese the Chinese are getting better at that and you just have to do the you have to do the math and you have to do the math in a in a much more complete way than most governments are able or willing to do that from the procurement side so I actually think they need you know they need assistance from from the private sector also to do those sorts of things I mean that's what his company is involved in my company is involved that the sophistication to be able to do the do the math essentially encourages you to look at the short-term long-term trade-offs and there are some projects which are tailor-made to think rather short-term and that's that's great and there are others which only will play out over 30 to 40 year time frame well I mean in Japan the governments you know they they keep changing the prime minister and yet you know the government when it comes to infrastructure obviously you all think very long-term now prime minister I've been serving so before I turn to a question answer in the audience let me just a quickly minute so because there's an interesting point about you know democracy makes things difficult and also you know that creates short-term thinking now that you have a different government in Thailand and you need if I'm not mistaken a hundred billion dollars infrastructure project to build wonderful changes should that be easier now I'm trying to adjust myself how to live with that you see I looked at the experiences of ASEAN countries and somehow I see a correlation between infrastructure development and strong government Singapore very strong government Malaysia strong government now Blau PDR you know they can develop projects Vietnam and all of them strong government do they have democracy well quote an unquote so now Thailand we are having a strong government usually I am a pro-democracy person and now I joined the government a military a military government and they have invited me to join knowing that I am pro-democracy so it's a compromise between the two of us and therefore our our intention at the moment is to use the moment of this strong government to push to pump you know the title to pump the for infrastructure and I am I can assure you that this year this year we would start many many projects you know and we need to do this we we cannot rely on the Japanese system you know Japanese Mr Tanabe said the executives there they make mistakes they apologize or they commit suicide in ASEAN you know we we we don't even apologize let alone let alone the committing suicide so we have a a different different different kind of system now I'd like to say something about this AIB again you know I I was with the what I call CPO chief preparation officer CPO he assured us and it is the Raja Radnam you know for them in Singapore that AIB would behave just like any other long-term financial institution that's that's the reason why I said they just another option another source they say that they would definitely not misbehave okay very quickly Samir how do you see the different you know we have different governments in the region producing you know different do you think that is impacting the way that infrastructure is being developed in this part of the world I mean as many countries also quite evolve I mean it's very interesting to see about how I mean if I go back there's a minister comments on democracy or non-democracy in Europe some of the times we say you should never do a project which goes above one term or two terms of a government because you know then you will be having issues but even even when democracy was invented it was invented in Greece as you know and they were about two million people and then you would think well democracy actually which has been defined at that time is that applicable and good system for a country like China India and also in the Asian country with so much big populations where you need to take a tough decisions and to get an infrastructure build a relatively short period of time and I think there has been a quite a good examples in Asia which people have been criticizing quite a lot actually the government you could be an either side I mean there is a history in South Korea where it said well is a father of Madame Park has been a great leader of a democracy you know he was not but did he get the infrastructure in the country to move out from a gtb lower level of of than Somalia in 1955 lower level than Somalia to be now today the eighth largest economy in the world probably not Singapore people can criticize maybe some of the governments in Singapore in the past but did Singapore made a major actually turn it did so so well sometimes you need to find the right balance and I do not think that having only 100% so-called democracy in the western Greek way of definition is maybe the solution so that means we need to need to use other type of things but the thing is that that's on the political side but there is we should not underestimate the role of the technology seriously because we have a lot of technological I mean we have been spending the whole world a lot of R&D in order to bring up a good solution for this word and it will be very sad in some of the Asian countries that they should do the same mistakes that the western world has done just because we have when doing that one so and I think now we have learned a lot and and maybe the european are not maybe as eloquent as the japanese going and apologizing to the whole world that we made a mess out of this but we did some of the times and we learned and it costs us has quite a lot of money so I think we need to take that learning and improve that so that's something which we really need to it's a lot of food for thought here I mean Greece started in a democracy started in Greece look at where Greece is now but that's not because of democracy there is another issue but that's another subject okay let's quickly questions please yes and could you quickly identify yourself who would you like to answer the question and please make a brief. Alex Merina from smart data now the the issue is about accelerating finance right so last year I worked on the project with ADB on developing the Mekong sub-region now let me give you a little simple case study problem Air Asia wanted to fly to Kosomui in Thailand but guess what they can't fly there because the airport is owned by another airline Bangkok Airways right so they said sorry guys you can't fly there and so what does Air Asia do they build an airport on the coast and then they ferry the passengers over and Air Asia is willing to do that all around the Mekong sub-region very happy to build and develop an airport by the way they'll get Air Asia to fly there tune group own Air Asia as you know they'll put a tune hotel there and everyone benefits so the private sector is actually taking the risk so to your point about is government the one that should take the risk it doesn't need to private sector is happy to do it and Air Asia is happy to do it in the Mekong sub-region now question I have is are the governments facilitating a group like tune group who want to build airports are they allowing the private sector enough and should they be a incentive mechanism to create more of these private sector initiatives where they have the funds they even have the demand okay well thanks very much perhaps minister Narangcha you would like to I think it's it's depends on the projects if projects are commercially oriented usually what you say happens but a lot of infrastructure projects are public oriented you know so people have different attitudes about these projects anybody else want to answer personally in the government should it be facilitator or should they stand in the way of infrastructure projects so I mean I think you can you can share about the role of the government all this time well I think as a regulator yeah I think the government in that case in my opinion because it is it is a public use but sometimes it's belonging to to the private sector I think the government need to to start to involve because especially on the airline business which building a lot of connectivity toward the Asia as well as it will improve the the trade and tourism but the role of government is important to to address this kind of issue but but it is also a sensitive issue because it's involved of private sector who feel that they investing in and they want to monopolize the business this is where the government has as a regulator has to come to play to mitigate the issue like this this I think that's that's my my my my view and my opinion more questions please apologies that I'm having my back on yes we have a microphone over here please and if you could just say who you would like to answer your question that would be great I have a question for the minister from Thailand my name is Evelina Pitushka and I'm from the insurance sector I represent also the ASEAN Insurance Council now you mentioned something I heard I hear a lot about long-term financing and you mentioned something also about the insurance financing the infrastructure projects now we have a lot of efforts in the insurance sector whether it is through the ASEAN Insurance Council but also through the ASEAN Asia Pacific financial forum and we have submitted a lot of documents to the finance minister as well there is a problem in the in the insurance sector because of the banking banking-centric regulation and also the short-term view of economic regime and we have a concertive effort to really build the size of the insurance so that it can finance the infrastructure so do you have what does the Thailand do and what can you advise the Indonesian government the importance of the insurance sector you asked the right person I used to be an insurance commissioner of Thailand and I used to be director of AIA you know which is a live insurance company you work for AIA no competitor so maybe I should not answer your question she still asked the right person it's obvious you know that the long-term saving the biggest source of long-term saving is from live insurance you can ask Mr. Tanabe about that the Japanese is very good at that in ASEAN insurance is classified as a service business so it is very much protected and regulated now in the ASEAN economic community the agreement is to liberalize the service sector insurance sector being included I myself is a liberal trade person I was very much involved at the time yes we would liberalize the insurance sector based on the ASEAN model first before allowing others who also participate and that means that from the beginning of next year you can anticipate a more and more liberal practices being applied to the insurance sector to encourage more people to to take up live insurance to allow live insurance to invest with riskier and riskier projects that being the case then we can help develop the capital market for ASEAN to make it deeper and longer in terms of saving and with that we can use insurance money to finance long-term investment infrastructure in fact in Thailand you know the biggest buyers of government bond long-term bonds 10 years 20 years insurance money and mostly AIA money thank you thank you for promoting that yes I'm Timur Sukirano from HHP I'm in the legal business I like to comment on the the strong government comment that were you know I mean looking at the Indonesian experience we had 30 years of strong government 30 years and this is my gripe about that regime it's not you know we should have got more roots built at that time or ports but in fact we don't so I'm not you know to me it's not a matter of strong government or not it's a matter of efficient government and I think they and hopefully this government that we have will be efficient in the in the infrastructure project but the other question I like to make is on the human resources I mean you mentioned how many roads or projects that are going to be made what about the human capital of doing it how about the engineers if you know and I like to you know the panel to kind of comment on that thank you thank you very much anybody would like to comment Samir I mean there is no question that the human resources is very essential and critical because if you don't have the human resources anywhere in this world you will not be able to any good job and as you know so there are there is like within for instance this as an example was in the oil and gas business he would say we have some hotspots yeah so sometimes depending about what's happening with the technology what's happening with the facilitation of the business you can the hotspots can move around so for instance there was a hotspot in the North Sea then the hotspot moved maybe to the Middle East and the hotspot moved to Asia to Australia because the 10 energy trains then the hotspot is moving now to the US because of the revolution and the shell gas technology and it goes around and and so for this type of things you need to have almost a global resource rather than a local resource because with a local resource you will not be able to solve that there is not actually one country in the world which has enough capacity and skills and talents to be able to solve everything by itself therefore coordination collaboration is very important and that's why many of the companies who are in the service industry they tend actually to start to be a global companies rather than local companies but they need to team up with the local companies now that's where where the beauty of what you're doing let's say in this so for instance in Indonesia a company like ours can not just come here as a parachuters will now we need to do that so we team up with a local company and or companies even we will form up a john venture and then we do the educational programs so for instance my company has an academy where you can actually get even accredited with a master degree if you go to the academy yeah so that's where we actually take all the local people then we'll get them to the education we'll bring them up to the top talent and then the top talent need to move be mobile move them around in many different places in the world and you form a global talent and in in the Asia it's nothing different and that's that's the past and the the way forward Eddie perhaps just a very quickly your you know when you can't talk about humans is innovation technology right it's not just a it's a quality of the human right I mean strong government is needed but like you said also the efficient government is more important right and for us but let's let's let's sidetrack a bit okay there are two things that you can develop your human capital first you learn you learn it will take some time and after that what you can do is also the other one is you you acquire fast by inviting people to come in and invest both on capital and also on technology right so you need to have a good environment for for inviting people to come okay to to bring the technology that we can share with the people in Indonesia that is how you can you know jump start the process of learning otherwise it'll be too long and then before you know it you'll be too late behind yeah so what I would like to share is also you know how good policy can can lead to a good holistic approach is if I can give a comment a bit uh the Kundarong Thailand case back in the 80s this is not about whether we are too late for Indonesia to learn or not but it's something always good to learn and never too late to learn in the 80s when thailand government tried to develop a master plan to build petrochemical center in rayon province yeah they think everything as a holistic view what we need to do to make sure that rayon becoming a manufacturing hub for petrochemical center so they have a master plan not only to build the road but also the port the power generation the diversification of energy so everything is well set up now if you go back to indonesia real case uh you go to marak or chelagon it's all sporty certain area yeah you have power connection certain area you have no power certain area you have road the other one you have no road etc at all right so it's this kind of of I would say learning from from from your neighbor it's nothing to be ashamed of you have to to learn and you know you want to say something kundarong say no at that time we have strong and efficient government and and I was a member of the planning team for the for the area okay yes yeah uh as a technology company uh human resource human capital development is very very important and being involved in infrastructure businesses nowadays my company is focusing in the field of data analytics because we when we have a good data analytics then operation and maintenance can become more rational so the cost performance of operation and maintenance will be become much better to support our profitability when we are involved in say train business we are introducing data analytics to identify which parts needs replacement and which parts need not replacement at this moment then thereby we can save the cost of maintenance we are introducing all all sorts of this kind of data analytics in many fields of infrastructure and we are developing those data analysts all over the world establishing big data label all over the world that's a key field for future infrastructure key to the sustainability of the infrastructure we don't want bridges you know falling down after 10 years or something obviously you wanted to share something well just just to address um um a question in regards of we we did have a strong government for 30 years during the uh Suharto times but um I think a strong government it's it's a very important efficient as well as a visionary with a good master planning I couldn't imagine when when during Suharto time if he didn't push to build the toll road inside the Jakarta the inner city toll road you can imagine how bad was the traffic but even when he pushed to build that during that time the public is complaining how can you charge that the reason because the income per capita was low during the time in 1998 the income per capita was 700 but today the Indonesia income per capita is like $4,000 and we expect within the next 10 years it will grow up to $8,400 right so it is important that the government has the ability to have a good master plan to push the infrastructure to move forward it is a difficult at the beginning public will complain but at the same time it will speed up the growth of the economy and then at the end they will benefit for that you're right but just for historical work we have to remember that the reason the public complained in part was that he gave his daughter a monopoly over the toll because nobody wants to do that right but we were talking about master plan I actually I mean I remember when the SBY government master plan and blueprints we had lots I mean the first thing that the SBY government did was they had an infrastructure summit that was 10 years ago and then the second part another infrastructure summit but you know the proof is in the pudding you know so many master plans and blueprints they don't get implemented well you know they they stay lovely on the shelf but next they need to improve the capacity building within the government exactly that's implementation is yes hello I'm Virginia from a global shaper from the Beijing international hub I'm also finance lawyer who specializes in outbound investment in infrastructure and energy I noticed that most of my clients who are Chinese are investing in infrastructure all over the world especially in Asia so my question is what is your view of the growing role that China will or is already playing in the development of infrastructure do you welcome that role gentlemen any of you would like to answer this of course we do we welcome anybody as long as I have the money anyone who has the money and you know technology right definitely we have no nationality bias you know from my perspective I mean I'm in the nation but you know I have no bias whoever wants to invest who can bring the capital who can bring the technology we should welcome them we welcome Chinese involvement in global scene global infrastructure businesses we have many partnerships with Chinese companies and Chinese government we can complement each other between Chinese strength and Japanese strength then we can build a better world that should be the ideal situation often the case we compete each other but in many other cases we can we can team up each other yeah one thing we learn you know when we show that we welcome the Chinese that Japanese will come running to compete with the Chinese very good for us maybe I should bring a european perspective I mean in europe you know as you what we do is that we we have let's say a number of sectors what we call them strategic sectors where we have a little bit of an issue with some of the Chinese investment for instance telecommunication we have a problem with that because we cannot control that but if somebody is going to build a bridge or a road it doesn't make any difference actually as long as they are doing to the quality and to the to the let's say expectations of of everybody involved but just to go so far that the UK as an example actually agreed to have a Chinese investment on the new on a building up a nuclear fleet in the in the UK for a nuclear power generation this is as far as it can go I mean what is more strategic than in UK I mean if that's not strategic enough so I don't know what's strategic anymore so I think there is an openness for that so it's not about actually being Chinese and not Chinese is it is an ability do you have the technology do you have the ability and the skills to deliver jobs on a good quality and on a on a total life cycle okay yeah I I mean absolutely your your your clients are making important difference this was a you know the sectors that are most important to technology were controlled by a couple of countries for a long long time and the Chinese role in the the equation both from a financing perspective and even from a technological one is really important so the comments I think that that I made earlier about for example looking at life cycle and procurement and Chinese equipment temporarily is not as reliable as some of the others but the innovation from the Chinese companies to drive cost out of the engineering is really important and I think the Chinese player absolutely crucial role in the development of infrastructure all over the world listen China well we're afraid of Chinese investment well I'm not really afraid of a Chinese investment I think they represent a good opportunity in in Indonesia but I want to make sure that the Chinese normally they love to sign with when the boss come for a visit everyone is signing it and then the implementation is is a limited so so I think the the the key important factor is I hear news that the Chinese is trying to build a power plant nuclear power plant in Indonesia I mean there should be a logic when we create a plant I mean it's it's a lot of Chinese technology that that is suitable for Indonesia I think they represent significant enough amount of power generation in in Indonesia but but they need to improve their technology in the year to come because the capacity of the Chinese power plant that been built in Indonesia is not running to the perfection comparing to the Japanese technology I'm trying to be open and honest in regard of this so I make a very short comment on the Chinese I make it very very short some of the times I think if you would be asking in Africa about how has been the Chinese involvement in Africa and and if you think some of the countries like in Angola where they have maybe about 150,000 Chinese there and it has maybe not all the time has been a fantastic story because it is quite a new process with the Chinese are going through because most of the time they do not leave any footprint they come there they bring even their food they bring their cans they leave their cans in Angola and then they go home and there is no schools being built maybe not an infrastructure it's a process where they need to go through they are they are they are not an old connolly in the sense of like compared to maybe the French or or or the or the British or others who lives actually let's say quite a lot of infrastructure behind them whether they stay in the country or not thank you very much and I think this is food for thought for future discussions gentlemen thank you very much for a very interesting discussions I won't wrap up I think we've you know we've we've got a clear gist of what the challenge is I say it's more than just the financial issues it's the social environmental it's you know the government issues and so on and so forth again John Samir Minister Wisnu Yasuo-san and Eddie thank you very much big hands everybody for our panelists morning