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ublic Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono says the government will begin land acquisition for the Bakauheni-Palembang section of the Trans Sumatra toll road project in 2015, saying the section will start construction in 2017.

The section was previously planned to stretch from Bakauheni to Terbanggi, however, Basuki said President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo had instructed the government to extend the section up to Palembang in South Sumatra with a length of around 500 kilometers from the initial 150 km.

'The land acquisition will be fully funded by the state budget, and it will be conducted between 2015 and 2016, according to Law No. 2/2012 on land procurement that states the land acquisition process should only take up to two years to complete,' Basuki told reporters on Monday.

In October, the previous government conducted the ground-breaking ceremony of the initial 15.8-km Medan-Binjai section of the 2,700-km Trans Sumatra toll road.

The second stage of construction of the 24 sections will stretch 22 km from Palembang to Indralaya in South Sumatra, and will be followed by the Pekanbaru-Dumai and Bakauheni-Terbanggi sections, according to the previous administration.

State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno said the ministry was reviewing the Trans Sumatra toll road project due to the fact that state-owned construction firm Hutama Karya, which had been assigned to work on the first two segments of the toll road, was not financially able to construct all sections of the toll road.

'We are studying how we can realize the project,' Rini said. 'In the future, we will also involve other state-owned construction companies such as Waskita Karya and PT Pembangunan Perumahan in the project,' she continued.

Basuki said the government had instructed Hutama Karya to form a joint venture with state-owned toll road operator PT Jasa Marga to construct the Bakauheni-Palembang section, since the project was predicted to cost up to Rp 50 trillion (US$4.35 billion).

The Trans Sumatra toll road is expected to reduce distribution costs on the island and, as a consequence, drive down prices and make goods more competitive, but the project has been delayed for years, primarily due to land-acquisition problems.

According to Rini, in addition to the acceleration of the Trans Sumatra toll road project, the government is also mulling a plan to ease logistics transportation between Java and Sumatra by constructing new terminals both in Merak Port in West Java and Bakauheni Port in Lampung.

'Both terminals should be able to cater for large numbers of vehicles 24 hours a day. Therefore, the ports should be developed, so in the future this is all integrated,' Rini said.