RI asks WB to fund telecoms project

JAKARTA (JP): The government is asking the World Bank for more financial assistance to support the development of the country's telecommunications network, a senior official said yesterday.

The Secretary General of the Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications, Jonathan Parapak, said it wanted the money to finance part of the Nusantara-21 telecommunications project.

"We talked about the aid proposal with the World Bank in April last year," he said.

Parapak said the World Bank had not yet given a formal response but was optimistic the World Bank's response would be positive.

"The World Bank was very supportive with our efforts to develop information technology here," Parapak said after giving a presentation at a seminar on the information technology revolution.

He said a steering committee was formed last year to establish the Nusantara 21 telecommunications development concept.

The Nusantara 21 concept focuses on the development of infrastructure and application aspects of information technology.

Parapak said the World Bank had encouraged Indonesia to begin making software to support the huge telecommunications project.

"The bank has agreed to help but we are still discussing the possibilities now," he said.

PT Telkom might cooperate with India and Pakistan to market the software as these nations are the current software makers and were more technologically advanced, he said.

"PT Telkom may also cooperate with private companies to produce software," he said.

Parapak said Indonesia would also set up partnerships with the Iridium global satellite telecommunications project as part of the Nusantara-21 program.

Iridium, led by U.S. firm Motorola, would operate 66 satellites to be launched next year with the capacity to serve 1.5 million mobile telephones and 500,000 international pagers.

Parapak said at least US$2 billion a year was invested in Indonesia's telecommunications sector. (02)