Indonesia asks China for special Belt and Road Initiative fund
- Indonesian finance minister working on loan structure and criteria
Indonesia has asked China to set up a special fund within its Belt and Road Initiative for investment in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, after offering China projects worth US$91 billion, Indonesian government officials said on Wednesday.
Indonesia has not been among the biggest beneficiaries of China’s trillion-dollar push to create a modern-day Silk Road.
Indonesia says this is because it has insisted that any loan within the initiative’s framework is done on a business-to-business basis to avoid exposing the government in case of default.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo made the request for a special fund during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sideline of the Group of 20 summit in Japan last week, Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said.
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Indrawati said she had been given the responsibility of coming up with the fund’s structure, including a proposal to China on the size of the fund and the criteria for loans from it.
“I am currently doing a study about its form, its mechanism, the size of it and of course the consequences of its costs,” she said.
Luhut Pandjaitan, coordinating minister for maritime affairs, said separately the fund should provide loans “with low interest in regards to investment in Indonesia, in partnership with Indonesian companies”.
Pandjaitan, who oversees belt and road projects in Indonesia, previously said the Indonesian government had offered China involvement in about 30 projects, worth US$91 billion, during the second Belt and Road Forum in April.
The most high-profile belt and road venture in Indonesia is a US$6 billion high-speed rail project connecting the capital, Jakarta, to the textile hub of Bandung, awarded to a consortium of Chinese and Indonesian state firms in 2015.
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The project has faced land ownership issues.
Another controversial project is a US$1.5 billion hydropower plant, funded by Chinese banks and being built by the Chinese state firm Sinohydro, in the heart of the Batang Toru rainforest on the island of Sumatra, which is home to the endangered Tapanuli orangutans.
Agus Djoko Ismanto, an executive of the power plant developer PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy, on Wednesday denied disrupting the orangutan habitat. He said 11 per cent of the construction had been completed and it was due to begin operation by 2022.
