World Bank provides PLN with us$750 million

Antara News, Saturday, June 12, 2010 07:44 WIB

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The World Bank has approved a new investment of US$750 million for Indonesia to help increase the government`s and state power company PLN`s programs in the manpower and training sector, and regional administration investment programs.

World Bank country director for Indonesia Joachim Von Amsberg said in Jakarta that in the manpower sector, a US$30 million Additional Funding had been agreed to support efforts of bolstering PLN`s management by way of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

"In the present global economic era full of uncertainties, new investments are proof of self-confidence of and support to Indonesia. We are very proud to support the investment programs of the Indonesian government and PLN," he said.

PLN`s finance director Setio Anggoro Dewo said the ERP is an integrated information technological system which could help improve and increase the management of PLN`s human, material, and financial resources.

"The approved projects are to expand the ERP system to Sumatera and Sulawesi following the successful application in Jawa and Bali, which has raised managerial capabilities with the availability of accurate financial information enabling us to make decisions based on more accurate information," he said.

He also said that in the education sector, an additional funding of US$500 million has been approved to help fund and apply BOS-KITA (school operational assistance, improved knowledge for transparency and accountability) designed to bolster school-based management and public participation which would improve expenditures on education in Indonesia.

BOS-KITA is a program based on the success of the government`s BOS-program of raising the quality of education for children aged 7 to 15. The new loan brings the total World Bank funding for BOS-KITA to US$1.1 billion.

He said the latest was a new loan of US$220 million to increase regional administration accountability in the use of special allocation funds (DAK), which in 2010 reached Rp21.13 billion or 2.0 pct of the state budget. This project will receive back the current DAK grant for infrastructure projects based on the concrete results from the participating regional administrations which had been reported and verified.

The financial and development supervisory body (BPKP) verifies the development results. "A total of 81 regional administrations met the coditions to take part in this project," he said.