The government has planned on finishing construction of a new high-speed railway connecting the capital Jakarta with Central Java’s provincial capital Semarang in 2024 to cut travel time to three-and-a-half hours from five hours at present.

According to the 2020-2024 National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) signed by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Jan. 20, the 435-kilometer Jakarta-Semarang high-speed railway will begin construction in 2023.

“High levels of urbanization in major cities [Jakarta, Surabaya, Semarang and Bandung] have not been complemented with high-speed rail connectivity to improve mobility between the metropolises,” the RPJMN reads.

The development of the Jakarta-Semarang railway is still in its preparation phase at present, while the Jakarta-Bandung semi-high-speed railway was 50 percent complete as of 2019 with its operations to begin in 2022.

A business consortium of Indonesian and Chinese companies called PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia-China (KCIC) will invest an overall US$6.07 billion to build the 142-km Jakarta-Bandung railway, which will cut travel time from three hours to just 40 minutes.

The two railway projects in Java are estimated to cost a combined Rp 63.6 trillion (US$4.6 billion) over five years. Public-private partnerships are expected to cover about two-thirds, or Rp 42 trillion, of the funds needed.

The projects are among the 41 priority projects under the RPJMN, which all together will cost an estimated Rp 7.4 quadrillion between 2020 and 2024.

The development plan is expected to help transform the Indonesian economy as the President hopes to achieve his goal of becoming one of the top five largest economies by 2045 with a poverty rate of almost zero percent. (mpr)