Indonesian President Joko Widodo has opened work on the presidential palace in the country’s ambitious new administrative capital, a flagship project of his two terms in office that has been plagued by delays.
The capital is set to move from traffic-choked, sinking Jakarta to the planned city of Nusantara in East Kalimantan province on Borneo island, but the $33 billion project announced in 2019 has been delayed by months, maybe years.
“Maybe because it was my first time, I didn’t sleep well,” Jokowi told reporters on Monday after spending his first night at the palace. The palace is 90 percent complete, and Jokowi said thousands of workers were still on site.
“They’re still cleaning and putting up furniture. Everything is fine,” he said. “There are no problems with water or electricity. The internet works fine.” It was not clear how long he planned to work there.
Nusantara is set to host the first Indonesian Independence Day celebrations on Aug. 17, the day the capital is also expected to be officially transferred from Jakarta, some 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) away.
But slow progress on construction and missed deadlines have called the relocation plan into question, forcing the Nusantara Metropolitan Agency’s head and deputy head to resign last month.
Most of the new city’s buildings are incomplete, and only the lower floors of some ministry buildings are usable. Delays have also affected plans to relocate 12,000 civil servants to Nusantara from July. Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Abdullah Azwar Anas said the relocation schedule would be adjusted depending on “infrastructure readiness.”
President Jokowi said earlier this month that Nusantara would be about 15 percent complete by Independence Day, but the entire city is not expected to be finished until 2045.
Joko Widodo’s government has relied heavily on private investment to build the city, with the state footing just 20 percent of the costs, mostly for the construction of basic infrastructure, buildings and public facilities within government “core areas.”
To attract investment, President Joko Widodo signed a presidential decree earlier this month granting investors certain rights, including land ownership rights for up to 190 years, in the future capital.
Public Works and Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said Nusantara already has an established generating capacity of 10 megawatts from solar power plants, while the government is working to procure an additional 40 megawatts to power the city.
He said a nearby reservoir would “more than adequately meet” the new city’s needs for clean drinking water.
Despite the progress, questions remain as to when the new capital will be officially moved, as President Widodo has yet to issue a formal decree. Until the decree is signed, Jakarta will remain the country’s capital.
President Joko Widodo has suggested that the decree could be issued by the next President, Prabowo Subianto, who will take office on October 20.
The delay in formalizing the decree has raised questions about where the inauguration ceremony will be held, as Indonesia’s constitution requires the oath of office to be taken in the capital.
The lack of investors for the megaprojects will put Prabowo in a difficult position once he takes office, having made continuity a campaign promise and pledging to restart Widodo’s landmark projects, including Nusantara.
Zulfiqar Amir, an associate professor of the society of science and technology at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, questioned the speed at which the ambitious project was being carried out, saying the rush had had a major impact on the project’s funding and planning.
“Who wants to work in the middle of the forest? [a] “It’s a lack of infrastructure,” he said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
