Eighteen bidders pull out of parking tender

Eighteen bidders pull out of parking tender

JAKARTA (JP): Eighteen private companies have withdrawn their bids from the potentially lucrative, yet high risk, project of managing the city's parking facilities.

"Most had thought that parking management is a lucrative business. But after exploring the prospects, they changed their minds," Sumaryono, head of the city's parking management agency, BP Parkir, said.

One bidder, who remains in competition, has even promised that it can meet the revenue targets set by the Municipality, Sumaryono told reporters in his office on Wednesday.

He declined to name the company.

The thought that more than 1.5 million vehicles are parked in various places in Jakarta every day is very alluring from a business point of view. But the reality is that parking management is not easy, he pointed out.

BP Parkir manages most of the city's parking facilities, including those along main roads and some off the main roads. However, the areas it controls are shrinking with more and more main roads declared no-parking zones. In some cases the agency sub-contracts areas to local people and collects the funds at the end of the month.

City authorities are considering bringing in the private sector, in the management of parking facilities, after the city's own agency failed to live up to expectations amidst allegations that some of the funds had been misappropriated.

Sumaryono said he personally did not favor the plan to privatize the management because of fears that his agency's 3,250 employees might be laid off.

However, on a separate occasion, Vice Governor for the Economy and Development TB Rais stressed that the parking management would not be entirely privatized but rather the private sector brought in under a revenue-sharing scheme.

Rais told reporters yesterday that such a cooperation is expected to improve the management, and make it more efficient so that the revenue target will be met.

He said BP Parkir repeatedly fell behind targets because of leaks in its financial management. With a more effective management, the target could be reached even with a parking fee of Rp 300 an hour, he said confidently.

The Municipality has set a Rp 14.6 billion revenue target from parking fees in the 1994/95 fiscal year, which ends on March 31. But in the nine months to December, BP Parkir had only raised Rp 9 billion and is likely to fall short once again. In 1993/94, BP Parkir managed to collect Rp 9 billion, well below the Rp 11.6 billion target.

Each year, despite consistently falling short, the city has set a 20 percent increase in revenues from parking fees. In 1995/96 it has set the target at Rp 16.3 billion, for 1996/97 Rp 22.8 billion and 1997/98 Rp 29.1 billion.

These targets are apparently what put off many of the bidders.

Sumaryono acknowledged that the chief problem in parking management is in controlling the funds, given that parking attendants do not always give out tickets while some motorists also failed to insist on tickets.

BP Parkir, he said, decided to drop the use of tickets in some areas and simply set a daily rent for each attendant. "But even this system has been objected to by some attendants," he said. (emb)