T

he Transportation Ministry has recently completed the new master plan of the much anticipated Trans-Sumatra megaproject, which will connect Bandar Lampung with Banda Aceh.

Deputy Transportation Minister Bambang Susantono said the new master plan for the 2,168 km railway was in line with the government’s Master Plan for the Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesia’s Economy (MP3EI).

“We revised the master plan because we needed to first of all create ink dots, marking the distribution and economic centers in Sumatra, before we began connecting one dot or center to another. This pattern will enable us to comprehensively develop every region the railway passes through,” Bambang said on Wednesday.

He said the government and private sector were currently conducting feasibility studies on a few of the regions in the megaproject, including areas in South Sumatra and Sei Mangke, North Sumatra.

Studies into these areas are expected to be finished this year to meet the 2013 deadline to begin work on the project.

Bambang refused to disclose the total investment of the project, but he said the figure had reached Rp 65 trillion (US$6.95 billion) on the former master plan.

The government will execute the project under the public private partnership (PPP) scheme.

Under the PPP, the government will issue concessions with 25- to 30-year periods and contribute 20 percent of the total investment needed to develop the railway, while the private sector and state-owned enterprises would contribute the remainder.

In the MP3EI programs, the government has committed Rp 326 trillion ($34.88 billion) in funding to finance railway projects from 2011 to 2025.

Apart from the Trans-Sumatra, the ministry is accelerating the construction of the 727-km Northern Coastal Highway (Pantura) double-track railroad. They have recently secured an additional Rp 1.47 trillion from the state budget for the project.

The money will be used to complete several sections of the line — Cirebon–Brebes, Pekalongan–Semarang, Semarang–Bojonegoroand Bojonegoro–Surabaya — by the end of 2013, one year ahead of schedule.

According to the ministry’s recent data, almost 17 percent of the work on the project has been completed, mostly along the 62 km stretch between Cirebon and Brebes.

The Rp 9.8 trillion project is part of the MP3EI program.