Road bidding requirements to be reviewed
Road bidding requirements to be reviewed
Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government will review its bidding requirements for future
toll road projects, following somewhat unsuccessful tenders on
six projects -- two of which failed to receive any interest from
investors.
Minister of Public Works Djoko Kirmanto said he would not
immediately start the planned bidding process of 13 expressway
projects, worth more than Rp 1 trillion (US$96.1 million), unless
a review on the bidding conditions had been completed.
"I think for this year, we can only propose the six projects.
We are still reviewing several conditions in our tender process
in order to make future bidding processes more successful," said
Djoko at the Presidential Palace on Wednesday.
Shortly after the much-hyped Infrastructure Summit earlier
this year, the government offered six toll road projects worth
more than Rp 3 trillion, and the offers were completed last
month.
However, only four projects have secured bids from investors.
The projects are the Cikarang and Tanjung Priok roads in Greater
Jakarta, the road between Depok and Jl. Antasari in South
Jakarta, the Cinere and Jagorawi route in Bogor, and one through
Makassar.
Two other projects, one linking Medan and Binjai in North
Sumatra and one connecting the Cileunyi, Sumedang and Dawuan in
West Java, failed to get any bids, most likely due to a
requirement in the tender process, which allows the government to
take over the projects if the investors incur bad debts.
The six are part of the government's plan to build a total of
1,300 kilometers of toll roads over the next five years,
eventually providing a direct expressway link between Merak,
Banten on the extreme western tip of Java to Banyuwangi, East
Java on the eastern tip of the island.
The projects are part of the government's effort to prevent
congestion in distribution, which significantly increases the
cost of doing business here.
The lack of highway capacity is plain to see as daily
congestion is a fact of life on most key roads that link one
province to another throughout Java, the country's economic
center.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
(Kadin) announced that the government had officially delayed a
plan to hold the second Infrastructure Summit initially slated
for Nov. 14 to Nov. 16.
The event will be rescheduled to Feb. 9 to Feb. 11 next year.
Kadin, however, did not specify the main reason for the
postponement.