The Government Prepares Incentive for Geothermal Entrepreneurs
Wednesday, 14 July, 2010 | 20:27 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:The government will provide incentives in the form of free import duty and value added tax (PPN) for companies managing geothermal energy.

The policy is a form of government concern on the development of renewable energy.

“But companies still must pay taxes,” said an expert staff from the Fiscal Board at the Department of Finance, Singgih Riphat, in the Green Investment Summit 2010 in Jakarta yesterday.

According to him, all this time entrepreneurs have complained about taxes such as PPN for goods and tools they ship in.

Since 2007-2008, the government has already got rid of PPN and import duty for goods shipped from abroad.

For domestic goods, the government could actually absolve the taxes and duties.

“We already asked for the list of goods, but entrepreneurs do not submit it to us yet,” said Singgih.

The government will also increase the subsidy on geothermal energy starting next year.

The increase subsidy is expected to decrease electricity price.

With this, said Singgih, the price of geothermal energy bought by the government is US$0.097 or Rp879 per kilowatt hour (kWh)

MAHARDIKA SATRIA HADI