Tuesday 1 February 2011

Director General of Water Resources : MINIMIZING FOREIGN DEBTS, THE DEPARTEMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS SUSPEND TWO DAM PROJECTS

In compliance with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s instruction to minimize foreign debts, whereby to reduce Indonesia’s overseas debts, a number of basic infra structure projects in the public work’s sector, which were originally supposed to be financed by overseas loan, had to be suspended or even cancelled.

Moch Amron, Director General of Water Resources, Ministry of Public Works for example admitted of having reduced the number of foreign consultants and suspended two projects, namely the Pandan Duri Swangi project in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, and a dam in Aceh, which was to be built by loan from the Government of China. “The two projects shall be continued as soon as the State Budget permits,” Moch Amron disclosed to BusinessNews on the occasion of Workshop on Community Based Sand Mining and Disaster Risk Management in Mount Merapi Area, on Friday (23/7).

Today, a number of projects financed by foreign loan are still underway but only continuing past commitments. The projects underway are the Bengawan Solo Projects, Citarum Projects, and a reservoir in Sulawesi. The projects are financed by credit from the Asia Development Bank (ADB), Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA) and the World Bank. The value of those projects are not precisely known, but one thing is sure the potion against total stated budget was not too big.

As told, the President underscored that Indonesia’s financial policy for the future was no longer based on overseas debt. For that matter related ministers were asked to follow up the policy by managing foreign debts. However the President disclosed that there were other ways of obtaining funds from other foreign resources, such as grant, swap or debt swap. “Let us minimize or limit use of overseas funds. We have other options such as from Rupiah resources, if possible also from grant, or debt swap, we can make a choice.”

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