Robert Scholten: And again the World Bank and multilateral institutions can play a big role in helping the government develop the data for these projects that will allow private equity investors and commercial lenders to make proper decisions. An additional problem is that Indonesian domestic capital markets are not deep enough to finance these long-term projects. Again there is a role of the World Bank and the ADB in helping develop these markets because when you look at the liquidity in the ma

Hongjoo Hahm: Why isn’t there a toll road from Jakarta to Surabaya, between the two biggest cities, in an island of over 120m people? In every large country in the world you have a highway network system. In Indonesia most of the freight transport is done by road, which is currently very expensive, so the economic rates of return on a trans-Java highway would be astronomical. And yet it doesn’t happen. Fundamentally it’s because of the concessionaires. Who holds the concessions now? Why are they

Indonesia’s infrastructure needs are vast. The Indonesian government has estimated the country requires US$150bn of infrastructure investment, US$65bn of which is needed over the next five years. These are huge sums that will need to be met through a mix of public money and private investment and the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) has just announced that it will put 13 projects worth US$3.7bn out to tender under its Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme. This seems like a sens

Indonesia’s infrastructure needs are enormous and investor interest is stronger than it has been for some time. Despite this, progress in financing projects has been slow. IFR Asia sat down in Jakarta with some of the key players to discuss what are the issues, obstacles and opportunities. IFR Asia: Indonesia’s infrastructure needs are vast. To what extent is it going to be funded through private versus public money? Devan Selvanathan: There is an impression that the government has looked to pri