RI gets loans, including for MRT project

Aditya Suharmoko, THE JAKARTA POST, JAKARTA | Wed, 04/01/2009 12:03 PM

The country has secured 71.3 billion yen (US$728 million) in loans, more than half of which is for the Jakarta MRT mass transportation project.

The mass rapid transportation (MRT) project aims to increase the capacity of public transportation and improve the environment, linking Lebak Bulus in South Jakarta and Dukuh Atas in Central Jakarta, routes which now suffer from heavy congestion on a daily basis.

Japan is providing 48.2 billion yen in loans for the construction of the MRT project, Toru Maeda, the head of economic affairs and development at the Japanese Embassy, said in a press briefing Tuesday.

“The loans are for the first phase of the project. We share [the common viewpoint on] the importance of the project,” he said after the signing of an agreement by the acting Ambassador of Japan to Indonesia Takio Yamada and Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry’s director general for Asia-Pacific and African affairs T.M. Hamzah Thayeb.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Transportation Ministry are in talks on the selection of the consultant, to make the design for the MRT project.

“The selection of the consultant is at the final stage,” said Maeda.

After selection, the consultant will spend a year designing the project blueprint, and the tendering process will then take between six months and a year. The MRT project is expected to start construction in 2011, and to be completed in 2015.

Takehiro Yasui, JICA’s senior representative, said the primary consultant would be Japanese as the firm would need to have good experience of this type of project.

He also said 30 percent of the procurement, particularly in technology, should be from Japanese companies, while the rest could be from any international companies.

According to the Finance Ministry, JICA has committed that it will finance 85 percent of the MRT project under special economic partnership terms while 15 percent will be funded by Indonesian central and regional government budgets.

Maeda did not disclose the total amount needed to fund the MRT.

Yasui said the MRT project had first been a business-to-business project, but had been adapted on a government-to-government basis.

The first Indonesia MRT project is expected to have a maximum capacity of 300,000 passengers per day, with an average travel time of 5 minutes and 30 seconds. There will be 17 trains, each having six cars.

Aside from the MRT project, the rest of the 71.25 billion yen loan package is aimed at flood mitigation in selected cities, preventing sedimentation in the Wonogiri multipurpose dam, developing the Bandung Institute of Technology and to provide engineering services for the Java-Sumatra interconnection power transmission line project.