T

he government reiterated Thursday its commitment to complete on schedule the ongoing trans-Java toll road despite financial constraints that forced it to ask for support from the private sector to temporarily cover land procurement funds for the mega project.

The hundreds-of-kilometers-long toll network, the transportation backbone of the country’s most populous island, is expected to be completed by 2019. Land acquisition, however, has become a major obstacle for the project, not only because of the reluctance of some local residents to sell off their land but also from speculators, who purchase land in the hope to resell at a higher price.

The latest data from the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry showed that land procurement progress had reached 75.1 percent for the 57.5-km Pejagan-Pemalang section, 16.39 percent for the 39.2-km Pemalang-Batang section and 38.34 percent for the 75-km Batang-Semarang section. The rest of the trans-Java sections saw land procurement progress above 80 percent.

The government has earlier urged construction companies to procure the necessary land for their respective toll road projects as it has already spent its Rp 1.4 trillion (US$107.8 million) procurement budget allocated from this year’s state budget.

The ministry planned to rely on the so-called bridging fund paid by toll road operators for land procurement to expedite the land procurement process, which in turn would be paid back by a special public service agency (BLU) for land asset management, expected to be established under the Finance Ministry later this year.

Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said the current top priority is to procure land for the construction of toll road sections connecting Pejagan to Semarang in Central Java, which was estimated to cost around Rp 5 trillion.

“We have completed the appraisal [for the land], made a public announcement and paid for the land procurement. We are upbeat to complete it by December,” he said on Thursday.

The land procurement for toll roads is estimated to reach Rp 44 trillion over the next few years, with some Rp 16 trillion needed to finance this year’s procurement targets.

The ministry’s head for its Bina Marga directorate general land procurement division, Herry Marzuki, said the upcoming presidential regulation on the bridging fund, as well as the government’s plan to allocate Rp 16 trillion of the revised state budget for the BLU should give toll road operators more confidence to procure the necessary land for toll road sections, especially those that are part of the trans-Java project.

On Thursday, Public Works and Housing Ministry and State-Owned Enterprises Ministry officials gathered to discuss the progress and issues surrounding ongoing priority-infrastructure projects managed by state-run firms. Representatives from a number of state companies, including toll road operator Jasa Marga, construction company Waskita Karya and railway firm Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), also attended the meeting.

Basuki said priority projects discussed at the meeting were the ongoing trans-Java toll road, railway level crossings and the new Probolinggo-Banyuwangi toll road route in East Java.

He said the government prioritized those projects as they could help solve traffic congestion issues in Java, citing that development of the 170-kilometer Probolinggo-Banyuwangi toll road would be accelerated to meet its 2019 completion target.

Herry said for this week, toll road operators overseeing Pejagan-Pemalang and Batang-Semarang would disburse a total of Rp 288 billion in land procurement. Jasamarga Batang-Semarang, the section operator, has disbursed around Rp 584 billion to date.

“We hope that at least the construction work for the trans-Java sections would not be hampered until December, as long as the bridging fund is available,” he said.