During a recent official visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jokowi invited UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al Nahyan to join the steering committee, which also includes the chief executive officer of a Japan-based diversified conglomerate, the Softbank Group, Masayoshi Son, and former British prime minister Tony Blair.

He told reporters he was hoping to tap into the wealth of experience of these people, adding that it would hopefully also attract more private investors to help develop the new capital.

“We want to build trust. The established trust would make it easier for us to cooperate [through] public-private partnerships [PPP] or other [forms of] cooperation,” said Jokowi at the Merdeka Palace on Friday. “I perceive Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed, Masayoshi Son and Tony Blair as people with good reputations internationally.”

Jokowi emphasized that the move did not mean that the government would take up loans or provide some form of guarantee through the steering committee.

Southeast Asia's largest economy attracted global attention when it announced in August that it would move its capital from flood-prone and sinking Jakarta on Java Island to a 256,000-hectare forested area straddling the regencies of North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kartanegara in East Kalimantan on Borneo, an island that it shares with Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam.  

The Indonesian government has estimated that the new capital would cost Rp 466 trillion (US$34.06 billion) and declared it would finance one-fifth of that with the state budget.