Middle East retailer Lulu Group plans to open its first hypermarket in Indonesia late this year.

The first store will be opened in the capital city Jakarta.

It will be the first of 15 stores planned by the end of 2017, at a cost of $300 million, according to M A Yusuffali, Lulu Group’s MD, an Indian businessman, based in Abu Dhabi.

The company will build a logistics and warehousing facility in Jakarta to service the network of stores. It will open stores in Bandung, Solo, Semarang, Surabaya and Yogyakarta.

“These projects are likely to generate more than 5000 job opportunities for Indonesians and to train them at all levels,” said Yusuffali in a statement issued to coincide with a visit to the UAE by Indonesia’s president.

“The fact that we are going to Indonesia with our Halal Hypermarket concept, is giving us the encouragement to look for a wider market segment there,” he said.

LULU has 117 stores across the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and India.