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Anastasia Tekege records and monitors her business figures on her computer daily, is currently expanding and diversifying her operations to increase and stabilize her earnings and devotes time every day to personally inspecting the progress of all her operations. A native Papuan, Anastasia was born in Paniai and now resides in Timika, where she owns and operates a landscaping service, a construction service and a small, retail goods shop. A natural entrepreneur with a keen business sense, she plans to soon expand into the rental market to meet the housing needs of a growing population with an increasing purchasing power.

Anastasia's success is fundamentally rooted in her aptitude and work ethic. However, like many others in developing economies, insufficient access to capital and lack of business skills training were impediments to realizing her aspirations of becoming a successful businesswoman in Papua. PT Freeport Indonesia's small business development program was able to provide Anastasia with the tools and resources she needed. She entered the program four years ago and today she is providing work opportunities for more than three dozen employees.

As part of our commitment to communities in which we operate, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and our operating affiliate, PT Freeport Indonesia, support local business development because local economic growth increases the standard of living and opportunities for our neighbors. We recognize that local economic growth and entrepreneurship is critical to achieving sustainable development. The process is not unlike our reclamation programs: we plant seeds, which grow into plants that make more seeds, and before long there is a thriving ecosystem. As local businesses grow and expand, they create more jobs, more wages, more spending and, finally, more revenue to support more new enterprises - building a local economic system capable of sustained growth and increased opportunities for generations to come.

Anastasia Tekege, mentored by PT Freeport Indonesia's small business development program, owns and operates a landscaping service, a construction service and a retail shop in Timika.

"Our business development programs enable the local communities to build better lives for themselves by providing access to the necessary resources. The sense of empowerment I observe from this strategy is phenomenal," says Arief Latif, Manager of Community Business Development.

Our support of local businesses is not limited to providing capital and business skills. PT Freeport Indonesia is committed to engaging local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) by increasingly integrating them into our supply chain. We recognize their value to the local economy not just as employers and sources of capital, but also as local suppliers. Economic survey data from the Mimika Regency, the local governmental district that contains our operations, indicates that nearly 500 of 650 SMEs created there were directly associated with our operations.

The emergence of a sustainable economy in Papua Province, which includes Mimika and 11 other regencies, is indicated in the results of a study performed by the University of Indonesia's Commissioned Institute for Economics and Social Research. The study found that PT Freeport Indonesia's share of the total economic output of Papua Province has steadily declined from 82.96 percent in 1992 to 47.58 percent in 2000 and is projected to decrease to 23.59 percent by 2010. This trend is not due to decreasing economic output from PT Freeport Indonesia - indeed, the economic impact of our operations has grown during this time. Rather, this trend shows that the economic output of a diversifying Papuan economy, including SMEs, is growing much faster than that of our operations.

Different businesses have different needs. To meet this variety of needs, our small business development program offers a number of services. Our financial services range from grants to uncollateralized micro-loans to low-interest working capital for larger enterprises. Our business skills training and capacity-building services are delivered by a dedicated staff through a mentorship business development model. We pair each business with a staff member to encourage a strong relationship that engenders a mutual understanding of the assets and challenges unique to each business. We believe the quality of these relationships are essential to the success of the SMEs that we support. Our current program capacity allows us to provide full-time support and assistance to approximately 40 SMEs, a figure that varies slightly as new businesses enter and others graduate.

We also actively seek to develop partnerships to maximize the impact of our development efforts. For instance, in the past, the local market's fish supply was limited due to the local fishermen's inability to transport their fish to the local market, as they had no means to properly and safely handle, preserve and process their fish. We collaborated with the local government to promote market access for local fishermen, introduced appropriate fishing equipment and provided local fisherman with training in the "cold chain system" and fish handling practices. Three years ago, operations began at an ice factory and simple fish processing plant. In addition, we were instrumental in having the local government construct a fishing dock near the processing facility. As a result, local fishermen now have a much greater opportunity to market their catch.

Globalized marketing and the growth of the Mimika economy increasingly attract outside entrepreneurs and products that compete with fledgling Papuan businessmen. To meet this challenge, PT Freeport Indonesia supports human capital development through apprentice programs, local technical schools, and higher education assistance. Encouraging the application of appropriate technologies, providing business skills training and supplying access to working capital promotes sustained local economic growth, aids the viability of existing and future SMEs and decreases the impact on local SMEs as imports increase and companies with greater cost efficiencies enter the local economy.

"We recognize that as the local economic environment evolves, we must adapt to meet its changing needs," says Arief Latif. Looking forward, he adds, "For the next five years, we have set goals to support the development of 10 new SMEs and 200 work opportunities annually."