As many as 19 state-owned enterprises have agreed to join forces to construct a toll road that will connect Java’s two biggest cities, with a major section of the highway expected to be built offshore.

The Jakarta-Surabaya toll road is slated to span 775 kilometers, and will cost roughly Rp 150 trillion ($13 billion), M. Choliq, the president director of construction firm Waskita Karya — one of the companies participating in the project — said on Thursday.

“Both construction and funding are possible,” Choliq said on Thursday, according to Indonesian news portal detik.com. “The only issue will probably be about regulations,” he added, without elaborating further. Choliq was speaking after the signing of an agreement between the firms on a feasibility study for the project in Jakarta.

State Enterprise Minister Dahlan Iskan said the feasibility study would take between three and six months, after which a proposal for the project was expected to be submitted to the government for approval.

“We don’t know yet whether it will be approved or not,” Dahlan said. “It may experience a similar situation to the Bali toll road, which [was not immediately approved] but was approved later on.”

Dahlan added that like Bali’s new highway, a major section of the Jakarta-Surabaya toll road — sometimes referred to as Trans-Java — would be built offshore.

“The construction scheme will be identical to that of the Bali toll road,” he said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono recently inaugurated a 12.7-kilometer toll road connecting Nusa Dua to Ngurah Rai Airport and Tanjung Benoa in Bali. The project cost Rp 2.4 trillion to complete.

The head of the Jakarta-Surabaya toll road consortium, Adityawarman, said that the highway was urgently needed because Java’s northern coastal highway (Pantura) is becoming increasingly more congested as more and more vehicles hit the road.

“Now it takes three days for a truck to travel between Jakarta and Semarang. With the toll road it would take only a day,” said Adityawarman, who is also the president director of state-run toll operator Jasa Marga. “The toll road also would shorten the trip between Jakarta and Surabaya from [up to] a week to two days.”

He added that as soon as the government approved the project, the consortium would break ground on the Semarang-Surabaya section of the road.

The 19-member consortium includes construction firms Adhi Karya, Wijaya Karya and Pembangunan Perumahan; port operators Pelindo II and Pelindo III; cement producer Semen Indonesia; steel maker Krakatau Steel; and lenders Bank Mandiri, BNI and BRI.

Source: Jakarta Globe