Indonesia’s Jokowi casts further doubts over readiness of new capital, Nusantara

Indonesia may be forced to delay plans to relocate a first batch of civil servants to its beleaguered new capital, potentially casting further doubts on a project that remains behind schedule and is struggling to attract funding.

Though the government initially planned to relocate more than 10,000 civil servants to its future capital Nusantara in September, President Joko Widodo acknowledged that this hinges on whether the project is ready.

“Still September, but it depends on the readiness of the capital,” Jokowi, as the leader is popularly known, told reporters in Nusantara on Wednesday. “We don’t want to force it, but if it’s not ready, we’ll postpone it.”

Shifting those relocation plans will add further questions over Indonesia’s ambitious new city, being built in a remote swathe of jungle in Borneo and more than a thousand kilometres northeast of the current capital, Jakarta. It would add to the project’s list of missed deadlines and woes that include slow construction and difficulties attracting foreign investor funding.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy is building Nusantara to reduce congestion in Jakarta and to spread the nation’s wealth – currently concentrated on the island of Java – more evenly among its more than 278 million citizens.

In an attempt to shore up confidence, Jokowi has been working in Nusantara since Sunday, holding a full cabinet meeting in the area. And Prabowo Subianto, who will be sworn in as president in October, earlier this week said he’s committed to pursue and complete the new capital amid concern that he would instead focus on his own policy agenda.