Having pledged to ramp up the development of infrastructure since the start of his tenure, President Joko Widodo and his government have made noteworthy progress with regard to infrastructure, despite having to grapple with various challenges that continue to persist.

The challenges the government is working to tackle are no minor roadblocks. They are years old problems and are believed to be the reasons for the failure of Jokowi’s predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudoyono, to make significant strides in improving the country’s infrastructure.

The new president, however, has seemed to have a higher level of commitment toward his infrastructure program. He has promised to build ports, roads and railways to attract investment into the country and to spur economic growth to 7 percent a year before the end of his tenure in 2019.

One of the main constraints of Yudhoyono’s infrastructure program was the lack of funding. Early in his tenure, Joko Widodo tried to find solutions to this problem by cutting the subsidy for fuel and shifting the money to more “productive spending” with infrastructure development receiving the biggest allocation from the cut subsidy.

A few months into Widodo’s term in office, then National Development Planning Minister Andrinof Chaniago announced the first real sign of the government’s ambitious infrastructure plans. Among the things planned to be built before 2019, he said, were 2,600 kilometers of new roads, 1,000 kilometers of new toll roads, 15 airports, 24 sea ports; an expansion of the railway network by 3,258 kilometers and improvements to public transportation in 29 cities.

In the energy sector, the government planned to build two new refineries, while upgrading existing refineries and also adding up to 35,000 megawatts to state utility PLN’s installed electricity capacity of nearly 52,000 megawatts.

After further review of the infrastructure work that needs to be done, the government later identified 225 projects in 13 sectors listed as “national strategic projects,” alongside a large-scale electrification program, which are to be completed by the year 2025.

The President later issued policies and formed the Priority Infrastructure Development Acceleration Committee (KPPIP) with the aim of expediting the projects. The KPPIP then selected 30 (later revised to 37) projects to be listed as “priority infrastructure projects,” which are supposed to all start groundbreaking by 2018. The selection of the projects was based on a number of criteria, including investment value and potential contribution to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The priority projects, which will cost a total of Rp 819.41 trillion in investment, include the development of eight segments of the Trans-Sumatra toll road, Kuala Tanjung International Airport, the light rail transit (LRT) projects in South Sumatra and Greater Jakarta, an oil refinery in Tuban, East Java, and the Palapa Ring broadband.

The government was eager to get some of the national strategic and priority projects underway despite being well aware of the various challenges it would face down the line. It quickly began building new roads, bridges, dams, railways, seaports and power plants, as well as renovating existing ones, in various regions of Indonesia.

New roads

According to data released by the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry, as of the end of 2016, the government had built 2,623 kilometers of new roads in a number of regions including those in Papua, Kalimantan and East Nusa Tenggara, as well as 176 kilometers of new toll roads.

Connectivity has been further improved by the construction of 29,859 meters of new bridges including the Tayan Bridge in West Kalimantan, Red White Bridge in Ambon and Teluk Kendari Bridge in North Sulawesi. The government has also started the construction of city railways in the form of Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), Light Rail Train (LRT), commuter line and a high-speed railway connecting the capital to the country’s West Java province.

Moreover, the government is also developing a ‘sea toll road’ by building sea ports, purchasing ships and providing scheduled transport to connect all of Indonesia’s islands, particularly those in remote areas. To support this, the government has built also built 47 non-commercial ports, with another 41 ports under construction.

As far as water management is concerned, the government has built seven dams, 265,000 hectares of new irrigation channels and rehabilitated 1.05 million hectares of existing ones. To address the problem of a lack of housing, meanwhile, the government built 699,770 housing units in 2015, followed by another 805,169 units in 2016.

The list of ongoing and completed projects is quite long, but under the government’s ambitious infrastructure target, its to-do list is even longer. Financing and land issues have been the main hindrance for many of the projects.

Despite the President’s move of cutting fuel subsidies to fund infrastructure projects at the beginning of his administration, the problem of funding has persisted. While the repatriated funds derived from the tax amnesty program has helped financed some projects, the government still needed to turn to other sources of funding to be able to realize all of its 225 national strategic projects.

The complicated and time-consuming land acquisition process is also an obstacle that has slowed down the progress of some of the infrastructure projects. As a result, by the end of 2016, it is estimated that half of the 225 national strategic projects are still in the planning stage.

In his remaining time in office, President Joko Widodo will be looking to make sure his prized infrastructure programs all go as planned. The president has reportedly instructed his ministers to focus on ensuring the future of the 225 projects.

He has also instructed the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister, the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) and the Presidential Office to monitor the projects in “a real-time manner” to identify any potential obstacles, including those related to funding and land procurement.

The government has also said that it will draft financial schemes and conduct feasibility studies for those projects listed as national strategic projects, to make them more attractive to potential investors.