Russia Ready To Invest In Indonesia's New Capital - Ambassador

Russia is ready to invest in railroads and nuclear power plants in Kalimantan, where a new capital city of Indonesia, Nusantara, is being built, Russian Ambassador in Jakarta Lyudmila Vorobieva said Thursday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th March, 2023) Russia is ready to invest in railroads and nuclear power plants in Kalimantan, where a new capital city of Indonesia, Nusantara, is being built, Russian Ambassador in Jakarta Lyudmila Vorobieva said Thursday.

"Plans to invest in infrastructure were announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indonesian President Joko Widodo in Moscow on June 30, 2022. Now Russia is just waiting for a confirmation that the auxiliary infrastructure facilities that were discussed by the two countries are ready," the ambassador said during her visit to Kalimantan.

Moving the capital from Jakarta to Nusantara requires large investments, and Russia is ready to cooperate with Indonesia on this project, according to Vorobieva. However, the details of such cooperation are still being discussed by the Russian and Indonesian governments, she said.

Russia possesses enough human resources to support Indonesian railroad and NPP construction, the diplomat noted.

It also has experience in building infrastructure on Kalimantan, as proven by efforts in the capital of the Central Kalimantan region, Palangka Raya, Vorobieva said.

The construction of a nuclear power plant is possible in West Kalimantan since the risk of seismologic activity there is low, she added.

In 2019, Widodo announced the plan to relocate the capital from Jakarta to the more central region of Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, where a new province-level city is projected to be built. The move is to alleviate the pressure on the over-populated Jakarta. On January 17, 2022, Development Planning Minister Suharso Monoarfa revealed that the name of the new capital is Nusantara.

In January, the annual budget for the new city's infrastructure development was estimated at 10.4 trillions rupees ($694 million). In February, Russian Foreign Minister Deputy Andrey Rudenko told Sputnik that Russian companies could assist in building the infrastructure of the new capital.