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Indonesia: State-owned construction firm to sell five toll roads this year
State-owned construction company PT Waskita Karya is in the process of selling five toll roads this year and says it already has buyers for two of them.
“We just closed deals for the [Surakarta-Ngawi] and Ngawi-Kertosono toll roads,” Waskita president director I gusti Ngurah Putra said on Tuesday as reported by kontan.co.id, referring to toll roads in Central Java and East Java.
Putra said the administrative aspects of the agreements were being worked out and the final deals were to be executed in August. He declined to reveal the buyers of the roads, but Astra Group has expressed interest in buying them in the past.
The three other toll roads to be released this year are Kanji-Pejagan, Pejagan-Pemalang and Pasuruan-Probolinggo. In total, Waskita plans to sell 18 of its toll roads.
The company had to sell its toll roads because it needed fresh money to cover the investment to develop them, Putra said, adding that it could not wait two to three years for the income of the toll road’s operation.
He noted that Waskita needed to pay interest on loans it used to build the toll roads and to conduct land acquisition for toll road projects, which was actually the responsibility of the government.
The government would pay once the projects were completed, he said, adding that the company’s receivables from the government had reached Rp 17 trillion. (bbn)
Source: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/07/10/state-owned-construction-firm-to-sell-five-toll-roads-this-year.html