“It was hard work,“ reported the exhausted but proud Sanet partner and engineer Sven Korf regarding the successful conclusion of a challenging railroad project in Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta. After two years of intensive negotiations, the Bavarian company KRAIBURG-STRAIL GmbH & Co. KG, based in the city of Tittmoning, was able to secure a deal for the installation of a railroad crossing, using STRAIL’s technology, in the island city of 250 million.
Good news about housing prices, as well. The lawmakers in Myanmar have recently decided to make it permissible for 40% of the apartments in an apartment building to be owned by foreigners. This figure is based on the laws already in place in Thailand prohibiting foreigners from owning land, while still permitting partial ownership, i.e. condominiums within a building, provided the number of foreigners living there does not exceed a certain percentage.
In the first part of our newsletter “ASEAN: SALES STRUCTURE AND MANAGEMENT – Successful sales structuring in the world’s biggest growth market, Southeast Asia” we described how important it is for Western companies to have their own staff on the ground in the relevant country on a permanent basis, that in the ASEAN countries a holistic approach is the basis for successful operations, and that local dealers and distributors should be chosen with the greatest of care. In the second part we will explain, among other things, why local sales staff have to be integrated skilfully and provided with organised support from company headquarters.
Many European companies are currently beginning to realise it: although according to the World Bank the ASEAN countries will be the world’s most reliable growth market until 2035, European business isn’t benefiting from this success. One reason for this is that in the past German companies in particular have equated Asia with China.
Everyone wanted a share of business in the Middle Kingdom, and the casual assumption was that if you had someone who devoted his entire attention to China, then he could also take care of “the few bits and pieces available in Southeast Asia”.