T

he Transportation Ministry looks set to fail to meet its spending target this year, as its directorate general for railway transportation has revealed that it has only spent 21 percent of this year'€™s budget funds allocated to it.

The ministry'€™s director general for railway transportation, Hermanto Dwiatmoko, attributed the low budget spending to loan cancellations as well as a lack of will on the part of contractors to receive early payment from the ministry.

'€œThe contractors are sometimes reluctant to get their portion of funds in advance; they choose to do so afterwards. That is why it [the spending] is so low,'€ he told a recent press briefing.

He added that some projects, such as the 76-kilometer double track railway between Kroya and Kutoarjo in Central Java, also had funding troubles after the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) told the ministry to cancel Japanese loans to finance the project and instead use funds from the revised 2015 state budget.

The double track railway has a budget of Rp 671.72 billion (US$49.1 million), according to a ministry document.

The contracts signed so far amount to 60 percent of the earmarked funds, and the directorate general plans to increase that figure to 80 percent by the end of the year.

The directorate general for railway transportation has been allocated a total of Rp 14.35 trillion in funds from the 2015 state budget. It received an additional Rp 5.4 trillion when the budget was revised.

The directorate general was assigned to spend most of its budget resources, Rp 13.6 trillion, on the development and the maintenance of railway facilities, according to the document.

One of the most recent projects signed was the procurement of 11 railway barrier level crossings with automatic warning systems for Rp 20.9 billion last week.

Meanwhile, the directorate general on Oct. 8 signed an agreement with state-owned train operator PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), among others, on the land and building use for the development of the Araskabu-Kualanamu double track railway in North Sumatra. The budget allocation for that project is Rp 750.66 billion.

Another major contract recently signed was for the double-double track (DDT) Manggarai-Jatinegara railway for Rp 2.3 trillion in July, to be developed by December 2017, with state construction firm PT Wijaya Karya, among others.

The ministry has long been criticized for slow budget spending, which amounted to just 20 percent of its Rp 64.9 trillion allocation from the revised 2015 state budget as of September, according to Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan. (fsu)