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.