Design for subway in the work

JAKARTA (JP): The government has chosen an Indonesian-Japanese-European consortium to prepare a basic design for the construction of country's first subway system connecting Blok M in South Jakarta and Kota in West Jakarta.

A memorandum of understanding on the basic design will be signed here in the near future, Governor Surjadi Soedirdja told reporters yesterday.

In order to finance the project, he said the government has combined local and foreign investors to participate in making the subway's basic design.

"The consortium is called IJEG or the Indonesian-Japan- European group," Surjadi said but refused to give further details on the date of the MOU signing.

He said that the companies in the consortium are expected to negotiate among themselves their contributions to the basic design costs before the signing.

The Bisnis Indonesia daily reported earlier that the consortium consists of Itochu Corp (Japan), Ferrostaal AG, AEG, Siemens (Germany), Asea Brown Bovery Ltd. (Sweden-Switzerland), Taylor Woodrow Plc. (England) and several local partners, including Citra Lamtorogung, Bakrie Brothers, Lippo, Bukaka, Suhamthabie and Steady Safe.

The governor, who is also the chairman of the project management unit, said that the consortium will not automatically win the contract to build the subway system.

"After the consortium produces the basic design, there will be a tender to determine the company in charge of constructing the project," he said.

Governor Surjadi's statement corrects the remarks made recently by Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto that the government would shun a tender process and directly choose the partners to build the subway project.

The subway's basic design will cost about US$8 million while the total cost of the 14-kilometer subway project has been estimated at a cost of US$1.3 billion.

"The basic design is expected to be finished next year," the governor said.

Surjadi said that his project management unit is still hard at work calculating the project costs.

"Calculating the cost is very difficult because we have to predict how much should be invested in every kilometer," he said. (yns)