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China or Japan: Govt mulls over Jakarta-Surabaya railway plans
The government wants to extend the Jakarta-Bandung railway to make the project more economically viable, as multiple delays – due to land acquisition issues and other problems – have led to a cost overrun.
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President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (left) inspects a model of the high-speed train to connect Jakarta with the country's fourth-largest city, Bandung in West Java, with the president of China Railway Corp., Sheng Guangzu (right), Chinese State Councillor Wang Yong (second right) and Chinese Ambassador to Indonesia Xie Feng (third right) during the groundbreaking ceremony for the project in Cikalong Wetan, West Java, on Jan. 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)
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ndonesia’s plan to invite China to submit a proposal for the Jakarta-Surabaya railway project has caught some by surprise, as the project appeared to be earmarked for Japan.
Questions emerged when Coordinating Economics Minister Airlangga Hartarto announced in May 2020 that the government had decided to extend the China-backed Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway project to Surabaya in East Java, along a route similar to one Japan had begun studying in 2018.
In January, Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan said President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo wanted China to work on the extension. In May this year, Luhut was tasked with meeting representatives from China to discuss the project.
Tokyo would not have forgotten how, in 2015, the government closed the deal for the Jakarta-Bandung project with China, even though Japan had been studying the plan since 2014.
Septian Hario Seto, deputy for investment and mining at the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister, told The Jakarta Post on Friday that the government had not yet made any decisions about who would work on the Jakarta-Surabaya railway.
“A more careful and in-depth study still needs to be conducted,” Seto said.
A spokesman for the office, Jodi Mahardi, told the Post on Saturday that the extension of the Jakarta-Bandung project proposed to China was separate from the one Japan had been working on, despite both being referred to as the Jakarta-Surabaya railway projects.
