Tempo.co-Feb 23
The Transportation Ministry’s Directorate General of Railways will meet with several investors involved in the financing 23 national railway projects. This step was taken following the evaluation of 245 national strategic projects by the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy.
“We will ask if they still want to continue or whether they have lost interest,” the Director General of Railways Zulfikri said in Jakarta, Thursday, Feb 22.
Zulfikri gave assurances that the evaluation process was still conducted in a marathon with the Committee for the Acceleration of Priority Infrastructure Provision (KPPIP) and the Presidential Staff Office (KSP). Several train lines in Kalimantan and Sulawesi, he said, were the focus of said evaluation.
“A couple of them is the train project in East Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan,” he said.
The KPPIP and the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs said that they will evaluate all strategic projects set forth in Presidential Decree No.58 /2017. The total value of the entire projects is Rp4,197 trillion.
The Directorate General of Railways has actually started this evaluation process. Out of 23 national railway projects, 13 have started operating this year. Ten other projects were undertaken under the financing scheme of the KPBU (cooperation between the government and business entities).
Investors and business entities have begun to reconsider their involvement in these ten projects following the fluctuation of coal prices.