The Indonesian government has announced that the materialized foreign direct investment (FDI) soared by 93.75 percent to 8.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2005 against 4.6 billion in the preceding year.

The materialized FDI involved 909 projects in 2005 from 544 projects previously, the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) said in a statement reaching here Wednesday.

Last year's major foreign investments went to transportation, storage and communication sector (2.9 billion dollars); pharmaceutical and chemical industry (1.15 billion dollars); construction (921.9 million dollars), food industry (598.8 million dollars) and metal, machinery and electronic industry (522.9 million dollars).

The foreign-funded projects produced 156,109 jobs in 2005 as opposed to 144,440 jobs in the previous year.

The board also said materialized domestic investment more than doubled in the same period.

The domestic investment surged 100.89 percent to 30.7 trillion rupiah (about 3.2 billion dollars) in 2005 from 15.3 trillion rupiah (1.6 billion dollars) a year earlier.

The dominant investments in rupiah included paper and printing industry (9.7 trillion rupiah or 1.02 billion dollars); food industry (4.5 trillion rupiah or 473.9 million dollars); food crop and plantation (3.1 trillion rupiah or 326.5 million dollars); construction (2.5 trillion rupiah or 263.3 million dollars); and pharmaceutical and chemical industry (1.9 trillion rupiah or 200.1 million dollars).

The domestic projects helped produced 122,750 new jobs in 2005 as opposed to 61,858 jibs in 2004.

Source: Xinhua