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recast concrete company Wijaya Karya (Wika) Beton saw its new contracts in the first three months plunge by 15 percent on an annual basis as the company awaited the roll-out of the government'€™s infrastructure projects, a senior official has said.

However, Wika Beton finance director Entus Asnawi Mukhson said on Thursday that his company was upbeat about meeting its full-year target as the government projects had begun to show progress in the second quarter.

As a result, the company has booked new contracts worth Rp 200 billion (US$15.4 million) since the start of the second quarter.

Entus said the publicly listed firm had booked Rp 550 billion in new contracts between January and March this year, lower than the Rp 650 billion it managed in the same period last year.

The figure means that the subsidiary of state-run construction firm Wijaya Karya achieved only around 14 percent of its full-year contract target of Rp 4 trillion during the Jan-March period. The company had aimed for a 54 percent increase in new contracts this year from last year'€™s figure of Rp 2.6 trillion.

Entus said that the sluggish contract achievement was mostly due to slow progress in the country'€™s infrastructure projects, partly because of a change in ministerial structure after the new government merged the Public Works Ministry and the Public Housing Ministry.

He added that progress in infrastructure projects was also slow as there had been some adjustments as the Transportation Ministry was working on introducing new project bidding procedures.

'€œThey caused some delays in state budget disbursement for infrastructure projects. That was why we were a bit slow in meeting our first quarter contracts,'€ he said.

Of the new contracts the company booked in the first quarter, Entus said that 60 percent came from projects from state-run firms, including from its parent company, while clients from the private sector contributed around 30 percent. Only 10 percent came from government projects.

Among the contracts the company booked in the first three months, some came from the construction of state-run electricity company PLN'€™s power plants and train operator Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI)'€™s railway lines.

'€œHowever, the situation has now picked up and we managed to book around Rp 200 billion in April alone,'€ he continued, adding that his company had booked Rp 750 billion in new contracts to date.

Entus said that the company was optimistic it could meet its full-year target as, despite a sluggish first quarter, massive infrastructure projects were expected to commence this year as pledged by the new government, which boosted the infrastructure budget allocation after trimming more than Rp 200 trillion of funds previously allocated for the fuel subsidy.

Wika Beton went public in the second quarter of last year and raised the second-biggest amount of funds from the stock market last year, after transportation company the Blue Bird Group.

The concrete maker earned Rp 1.2 trillion from its initial public offering (IPO), of which 85 percent was allocated to finance business expansion while the remaining 15 percent was to be spent on working capital.

The company saw its share price '€” listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) under the code WTON '€” drop by 1.2 percent to Rp 1,200 on Thursday.

The shares have, however, doubled from their IPO price of Rp 590.