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Issue of the day: Editorial: The controversial $5.5b project
Feb
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strong>Feb. 1, p6
We find it difficult to understand why President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo has insisted on launching the construction of the US$5.5 billion, 150-kilometer high-speed railway project linking Jakarta and Bandung when most of the necessary permits have not been obtained.
More worrisome yet is that the main economic, commercial and technical analyses for the project have not been completed. Latest reports say the investor, PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), a joint venture between four Indonesian state-controlled companies and China Railway, has not even obtained the building permit and concession license.
Jokowi's main consideration in choosing China, instead of Japan, for implementing the project was the fact that China's investors do not ask for government guarantees and the project is wholly a private business deal, financed mostly with loans from China, while Japanese investors demanded financial involvement by the government in the form of guarantees.
Your comments:
'[...] adversely affect the government's credit rating'? What credit could be adversely affected?
Yaudah
So who should be responsible when this project fails?
AnimisticGod
It will be a high-speed freight train.
Sorong
When I was a kid growing up in Edinburgh, I remember seeing enormous numbers of trains carrying trucks, not just passenger coaches. Apparently huge amounts of stuff went by train.
Then I have a recollection of the Caledonian Station being closed, goods yards disappearing, and suddenly the roads are busy with big trucks carrying stuff and belching black smoke into the air.
This was Doctor Beeching's work in the 1960s, a know-nothing bean-counter who destroyed the UK's rail infrastructure and condemned whole towns and cities to diesel pollution, the unnecessary construction of motorways for juggernauts and the slow-down of transportation of goods to the present day.
It is fast forward to Indonesia where they should have been looking at rail-freight, but somehow didn't think it romantic enough and didn't get the brown envelopes.
One can only shake one's head in disbelief as Indonesian land politics shoot themselves and the populace in the foot once more.
They have learned nothing (as they are incapable and don't care) and might claim that carrying freight was not part of the brief.
If this project ever gets underway, then eventually it should be run for freight, with goods yards being sited strategically.
It makes sense (but making sense is against Indo's modus operandi so it won't happen).
Maurice gold
'We find it difficult to understand why President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo [...]' It has been difficult to understand only because we continue to give weightage to him.
When all is said and done, and admittedly in hindsight when we are all the wiser, the person we have as president now is a man elected by the people.
As with all incapable and incompetent leaders everywhere, there will be times he will make decisions that he should not.
There will also be times he will not make decisions when he should.
This high-speed Jakarta-Bandung train is one of those decisions that he should not make but did. It is true to form for the man to make such a decision.
Wandering Star
'We find it difficult to understand why [...]' Let me guess: Is there any power abuse behind it?
Devineasia
The whole project is an unnecessary initiative which is aimed only at bolstering Joko and his government's branding. They boarded the Shinkansen in Japan and wanted the same toy to be constructed and operated in Indonesia with such a ridiculously short distance for a high-speed train line.
The Java-centric development has continued in any government elected to lead this country. The budget will be very much better used to develop rural areas in different parts of the country.
Sumatra, Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Papua need more infrastructure development. Not only Java. The environmental impact analysis has not fully been completed, and the project is about to continue to 'spur' growth.
Simba1991
A train from Jakarta to Bali would be good ' I see potential in that (yes, across the water), but to simply go to Bandung? What for?
Abdul Malik
