Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The transportation ministry said the Jakarta monorail project must continue to be built to help solve the capital citys transportation problem.

"The monorail project under the PT Jakarta Monorail (JM) must be continued," Director for Traffic and Transportation Affairs of the Ministry of Transportation Hanggoro Budi Wiryawan said in a written statement here on Saturday.

He noted that PT JM officials had held a consultation meeting with the ministry of transportation to explain the problems it was facing in the projects construction.

Banngoro added that JM has stated that the ticket price of the monorail was about Rp9,000.

The monorail project is one of the mass transport programs in Jakarta being built under a public-private partnership (KPS) system. It has passed several technical, legal and financial studies by the Infrastructure Development Acceleration Policy Committee (KPPI) team.

The Indonesian transportation sector is facing a large gap between its transportation capacity and the volume of cargo and passengers, stated the Ministry of Transportation.

The Ministry of Transportation noted in its press statement made available to Antara recently that the difference between passengers and cargo, and the systems capacity, was chiefly attributed to increasing economic growth and the rising purchasing power of the public.

Also, the transportation sector faced numerous challenges in areas such as demography, urbanization, regional gaps, and transportation energy consumption, the statement revealed.

It also shed light on Java Islands paradox, where Java only accounted for seven percent of the countrys land areas, but was the most populous region, containing 55 percent of the countrys population.

On the one hand, the matter will create great complexity in the interaction of the population with transportation, while on the other hand, it will also open up new investment opportunities. So, this will necessitate the development of a transportation system that can be integrated with the economy on Java Island.

The ministry of transportation is also working on the 2015-2019 strategic plan, which will serve as a reference for national development in the transportation sector for the new government.

The 2015-2019 strategic plan will comprise four policies: the development of the national connectivity program, the development of the national transportation industry, the internalization and integration of cross-sectoral strategic issues, and revitalization of the urban transportation sector.

(A014/INE)
(KR-BSR/S012)

Editor: Jafar M Sidik
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