The best services to use when moving to Indonesia

Dear All,

Here is a more ground up system I used. Having first spent 6 months in various parts of Indonesia with a view to setting up a business. I visited all over at places that were shown on the map as main towns and cities.

There were definitely lots of tourist attractions that were great personally and really unusual nearer the volcanic areas. Bali was a place apart basically the mix of Indian Hindu cultural origins within a population mostly of nonorthodox Islam.

I really liked the people, the food, and landscape. I had in mind to evaluate the Philippines against Indonesia, but the food was initially a turn-off especially in Manila.

After that decision, it was finding a location. It helps to have a disinterested ( not expecting a payment for services) friendly person who wants to see your success. We selected Djakarta as business was intensive with traffic and as with all other cities-type woes. But sited within a population of about 100 mill.  gentle Javanese.

We located at Jalan Thamrin in a facility that had office front space and two rooms at the rear for accommodation. The food was nearby and we were next to a multi-national company Jardines from H.K.

We were early introduced to a "Village Kepala" who was to be paid a small stipend monthly to take care of all evils and to give guidance.

What was surprising was that we had to pay 2 years rental to the landlord as it was customary, covering the entire contracted period. Thereafter we sent in a Manager (who was a Malay as a language skill, and a Muslim without evangelizing Islam) out of Singapore, and he had absolutely no trouble after we hired a guy who was a customs broker of 20 years locally. Javanese are really nice people who are slow to advantage themselves.

Furniture and other conveniences like newspapers etc were directed in a good manner by the Village Headman. So many proposals were offered that we were hesitant to consider, but truly looking back having free international telephone calls or free utility bills by reference to the Headman for a small monthly fee, would have been a good value. Western trained persons like us did not dare indulge in such local widespread practices.

In business, a project manager's income is subsidized by kickbacks always paid, "under the table". But because we asked for receipts or invoices to cover the same we did not do as well as it were possible with a high turnover in our industry's customers. All these were cultural "no-nos", but what could we do? we had one of the USA big six as our auditors and they said we could do the local practice if we paid me a large portion and I paid out of my personal account. There is a legal impediment to doing that. That way I have to pay huge taxes personally at my home base following that Indonesia has no double taxation agreements as a relief measure for international business people.

Bali, where our forum's majority reside, was also a visit location but mainly for enjoyment. The order values in the Building Industry were small as at the hotels were small compared to Djakarta.

I will end here as no one really enjoys what businessmen do to survive. I enjoyed my company's efforts in Djakarta, as the holidays I spent in Indonesian locations was great.  Of course, they were a business expense deduction because I always spent weekdays and Saturdays visiting customers. I found Surabaya business practices, different from Jakarta like Bali's business practices were different from all others.

Thank you for the indulgence.