Located in Majalengka, some 200 kilometers southeast of Jakarta, the new airport, once completed, will cover a 1,800-hectare area.

The project will need Rp 10 trillion (US$750.4 million) in investment to complete, with some Rp 2.2 trillion needed to build the land side in a 1,000-hectare plot of land in its first phase.

“The [West Java provincial] administration has transferred a total of Rp 800 billion for the project, then we will seek the remainder of the construction costs,” BIJB president director Virda Dimas Ekaputra told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

The company previously stated that the 70 percent of the funding would be derived from its internal cash and provincial government capital injection, while the rest would be obtained from loans.

From the 70 percent funding portion, the West Java provincial government would contribute 51 percent of the stake, while the rest is expected to come from public funding through the issuance of mutual funds with a limited offer (RDPT).

Virda said that the company aimed to garner Rp 930 billion from the RDPT, lower than the initial expectation of Rp 1.5 trillion.

BIJB also revealed that a total of seven conventional banks and 18 sharia banks have joined to offer two separate syndicated loans for the project, both amounting to Rp 1.4 trillion and Rp 1.9 trillion respectively.

“We only need around Rp 660 billion, but we can use it later,” he said, adding that the signing for the syndicated loans was also expected to be completed later this month.

Kertajati Airport is being built to ease aircraft and passenger congestion at the country’s main gate, Soekarno Hatta International Airport, in Cengkareng, Tangerang, Banten, and also to replace Husein Sastranegara International Airport in Bandung, West Java, as the commercial airport of the region.

In the first phase of operation, the airport terminal is expected to be able to welcome between 5 million and 11 million passengers annually.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo previously protested at what he described as the “slow” construction of the airport on his visit to the area last month.

So far, construction progress for the airport stands at 40 percent, with the terminal facility expected to be completed by November. The supporting infrastructure, meanwhile, is due to be completed four months earlier.

In response to President Jokowi’s complaint, Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi targeted the airport to commence operations in February 2018, earlier than the initial target of June next year.

The Transportation Ministry itself is in charge of building the air-side facilities, such as the runway, with a budget allocation of around Rp 250 billion from the state budget.

“We are currently also preparing for the operations in parallel [with the construction],” Virda said.

BIJB expects the airport to serve 14 routes when it begins operations, including international routes connecting Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.

It also signed a cooperation agreement with state oil and gas firm Pertamina on Thursday for the construction and management of an aircraft fueling depot (DPPU) in the airport.

“The facility should be finished in early 2018, in line with the completion of the airport,” Pertamina marketing director Muchamad Iskandar said, adding that the depot was designed to store 6,000 kiloliters of jet fuel in the first phase of its construction.

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