Fundamental factors analysis in relation to the financial planning of energy projects in Southeast Asia

This thesis aims to provide a deep overview on the energetic context and on the current investments situation in Southeast Asia. After a detailed analysis of the “ASEAN” countries from a socio-political, technological and economic point of view, we focus our attention on two main areas, which seem to be the most attractive for the purpose of this document: Indonesia and Malaysia. Energy consumption is a key factor strictly related to economic development of an emerging country given the fact that power demand is growing more and more and in some cases problems of energy shortage represent an important breaker for a country progress. In the last years Indonesia and Malaysia faced a growth of energy consumption per capita and their governments tried to find a solution to these problems, making a review about their energy policies to favour the infrastructure expansion and in particular to attract the interest of foreign investors for new exploration and production projects. Both of the countries have at disposal a lot of natural resources, the traditional ones such as coal, oil and natural gas, but also the alternative ones like geothermal, solar and hydroelectric energy. We want to understand if the attractiveness in terms of resources is followed by suitable and favourable conditions for investments projects. Furthermore, we decided to report different examples of investments incentives and facilitations jointly with the procedures that need to be fulfilled in these countries to undertake an investment activity. Nevertheless, the energy sector is one of the most capital absorptive and we want to understand if in a such a situation of global economic distress, where investors are more reluctant to provide both equity and debt capital, there is room for any type of investor to put their financial resources at risk in order to catch profitable opportunities. Moreover, in the last years some public investors like Asian Development Bank, The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been more active in the funding of innovative projects located in developing countries. We want to stress the importance of social factors that could represent a potential barrier for a business establishment. As a matter of fact, foreign investors have to be very flexible and reactive, transforming these potential threats in opportunities for their projects. In conclusion, keeping in mind the dynamics related to energy figures and the investments activities in Indonesia and Malaysia, focusing on Private Equity Funds ventures, we aim to give recommendations on which of these two areas an investor should focus its attention on.