P

resident Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s plan to speed up the development of toll-roads in the country may face further delays as the government is running out of money to acquire land for the strategic projects.

The Public Works and Public Housing Ministry said the cost of acquiring land for the toll roads was estimated to reach Rp 40 trillion (US$2.9 billion), more than the currently available funds.

'€œAlmost all of our budget allocation for land procurement was spent in January,'€ the ministry'€™s head of land procurement Herry Marzuki said recently.

He said the ministry had spent Rp 233.4 billion on land procurement for the trans-Java toll road, while the trans-Sumatra toll road received Rp 7.3 billion and other toll roads outside Java used Rp 354.4 billion.

The ministry had a budget of Rp 1.4 trillion for land procurement this year. However, of that amount, only Rp 864 billion will be effectively spent on land procurement while the remainder will be used to pay for '€œother expenses'€ such as administration fees and land measuring.

'€œThe presidential regulation stipulates that the development of the toll roads needs to be accelerated. So I don'€™t think they can forget about the funding,'€ Herry said.

The ministry has pinned its hopes on additional funding from the revised 2016 state budget later this year, as well as land procurement funds and loans from the General Services Agency (BLU) for land clearing.

It plans to get an additional Rp 7 trillion of land procurement funds through a proposal to the Finance Ministry.

The regulation also stipulates that a company can procure land in the government'€™s name using its own private funds, which will be then paid back through the state budget or a calculation on the return of investment (ROI).

President Jokowi listed 47 toll roads in his presidential regulation on the acceleration of the development of national strategic projects, including the Pandaan-Malang route in East Java, Manado-Bitung in North Sulawesi and Balikpapan-Samarinda in East Kalimantan.

The presidential regulation aimed to solve various problems regarding infrastructure projects, including easing the issuance of permits.

Jokowi aims to progress infrastructure development in the archipelago to boost the slowing economy.

The government allocated Rp 104.7 trillion in the 2016 state budget to the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry for infrastructure projects, putting it among the ministries that received the highest budget allocations.

The ministry aims to build 1,000 kilometers of new toll roads by 2019.

Meanwhile, Herry also said that based on his estimations, the ministry would need to spend Rp 2.5 trillion by March, as land clearance was almost nearing completion.

'€œWe cannot stop procuring land. That'€™s why the government really needs to secure the funds,'€ he said.

Responding to the problem, Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said the ministry had prepared some solutions to the land procurement issue.

'€œWe can use the remaining funds from bidding, or ask investors to procure it for us first, because there'€™s a mechanism for that in the regulation. We will pay them back with the revised state budget allocation,'€ he said.