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Jakarta Post

Ahok offers grants to partner provinces

Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama has asked member-provinces of the Governors’ Forum (MPU) to cooperate and support each other, especially in food distribution and logistics

Dewanti A. Wardhani (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, November 28, 2014

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Ahok offers grants  to partner provinces

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overnor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama has asked member-provinces of the Governors'€™ Forum (MPU) to cooperate and support each other, especially in food distribution and logistics.

The MPU is a cooperation forum consisting of East Java, West Java, Central Java, Banten, Yogyakarta, Lampung, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) and Jakarta. The forum conducts an annual governors'€™ meeting, which this year is hosted in Jakarta.

During a meeting with the governors and deputy governors of the nine provinces at Hotel Borobudur in Central Jakarta on Thursday, Ahok expressed his desire to increase cooperation within the forum.

'€œOur provinces are among the main players in Indonesia. We must combine our forces to be strong. We must cooperate and synergize,'€ he said.

Ahok added that the city administration would provide grants to the nine provinces if needed. The grants, he said, could be used for a range of projects.

'€œFor example, we could give a grant to Banten and West Java to build logistics airports in South Tangerang and Karawang, respectively,'€ he said, adding that the city could also fund the development of a logistics terminal in West Java.

By developing logistics airports and terminals in other areas, he said, distribution to other parts of Jakarta would be cheaper and easier. Currently, most goods pass through Tanjung Priok port in North Jakarta and Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang. Industrial activity, however, occurs across the city, in North, West and East Jakarta as well as Karawang, Bekasi and Depok in West Java.

Ahok said that the city administration was also interested in buying rice and meat from Lampung and NTT respectively, and offered to buy shares in the beleaguered Bank NTT.

'€œWe have too much money on our hands and we'€™re struggling to spend it on our own. Therefore, we plan to give grants to other provinces. The prosperity of other provinces is also Jakarta'€™s prosperity,'€ Ahok said.

The Jakarta administration has indeed had trouble in spending its budget, which this year is Rp 72 trillion (US$5.91 billion). However, as of early October, the city had only spent around 30 percent of that sum.

'€œRather than letting it go to waste, I think it would be better if we used it to help other provinces,'€ Ahok said.

Annually, the city administration distributes billions of rupiah in grants to neighboring cities such as Bekasi, Depok, Bogor and Tangerang, to be spent on projects such as flood mitigation and infrastructure development.

Coordinating Economic Minister Sofyan Djalil, who also attended the meeting, added his voice to Ahok'€™s, complaining moreover that the 10 MPU members often lacked coordination.

'€œI call on all provincial heads to minimize their egos. In the end, we are all one country and we must cooperate for the good of the people,'€ Sofyan said.

'€œAs coordinating economic minister, I am ready to help whenever I am needed,'€ Sofyan said.

According to MPU secretariat head Mara Oloan Siregar, the population of the MPU provinces reached 157 million in 2013, more than 60 percent of the national population. This, he argued, was reason enough for MPU governors to work together to take the nation forward.

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