Japan Renew Their Offer for Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Railway Offer

Japan is reiterating its intention to win over the Indonesian government in a bid to secure what will be the first high-speed railway project in the archipelago: by offering prices the Japanese claim to be lower than the Chinese are offering.

“We are very serious about wanting to participate in Indonesia’s infrastructure development, especially when it comes to the construction of high-speed trains,” Yoichi Miyazawa, Japan’s Minister for the Economy, Trade and Industry, told an Indonesian delegation ̶ lead by Indonesian Trade Minister Rachmat Gobel ̶ in Tokyo on Tuesday.

According to Miyazawa, the Japanese government is willing to offer a soft loan to cover 75 percent of the funding needed for the project, which will connect capital Jakarta with the country’s third-largest city, Bandung, West Java.

Japan, which has conducted a feasibility study for the project, estimates that it will cost a total of Rp 45 trillion ($3.3 billion).

The interest rate on the loan Japan is offering will be as low as 0.1 percent, and the Indonesian government will have 40 years to pay off the amount. And under the terms of the soft loan, the government will only start paying the installments 11 years after the project has started operation.

By comparison, China, which is competing head-on with Japan for the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train project, is offering its product and services at a cost of $4 billion, with a lending period of 25 years and an annual interest rate of 2 percent.

Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains will be able to travel the 180-kilometer route between Jakarta and Bandung in 36 minutes.

Source : beritasatu