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Prabowo asks Jakarta to shell out half of seawall costs
The seawall development in Jakarta is part of the 500-kilometer Giant Sea Wall megaproject along Java's northern coast, which is estimated to cost up to $80 billion and take 20 years to complete.
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President Prabowo Subianto addresses his ministers during a plenary cabinet meeting on May 5, 2025, at the State Palace in Central Jakarta. (Antara/Galih Pradipta)
P
resident Prabowo Subianto has asked Jakarta to contribute half of the funding needed to build a massive seawall on the city’s northern coast as the central government struggles to foot the bill for the entire project, which he estimated would cost between US$8 billion to 10 billion and take up to eight years to finish.
“Jakarta has a very big budget. So I’d say Jakarta must share the cost with the central government,” the President said on Thursday in his speech at the International Conference on Infrastructure (ICI) 2025, which ran from June 11 to 12 at the Jakarta International Convention Center.
The city administration and the central government should split the cost fifty-fifty, he said, “because this project is actually for Jakarta”.
The Jakarta seawall project is part of the government’s broader plan to build a coastal barrier spanning at least 500 kilometers from Banten to East Java to combat land subsidence and flooding. The entire expanse of the northern Java seawall, dubbed the Giant Sea Wall, is projected to cost up to $80 billion and take around 20 years to complete.
When mentioning the seawall’s cost during his speech, Prabowo pointed to Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati in the audience, telling her to “relax” and not worry about the project’s burden on the state budget.
Continuing, Prabowo said he had met recently with Jakarta Governor Pramono Anung, who had expressed support for the giant seawall project in Jakarta.
The governor’s expert staffer Chico Hakim said on Friday that the city administration would comply with the government’s direction, state news agency Antara reported.
