Holiday Ayo - The Jakarta-Bandung Fast Train Project is currently the target of public criticism in the country. Several problems hit the cooperation megaproject between Indonesia and China.

This project should be completed in 2019, but it is estimated that it will only be completed in the middle of 2023, aka 4 years late. Construction costs also swelled drastically or experienced a cost overrun of up to IDR 21 trillion, far exceeding the investment offered by Japan's proposal.

After calculating the cost overrun, the total fast train investment is estimated to be between IDR 114.24 trillion to IDR 118 trillion. The China Development Bank (CDB) even asked the Government of Indonesia through the state budget to also bear the cost increase for the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train project, which was worked on by PT Kereta Api Indonesia-China (KCIC).

Until now, the total APBN funds that have been approved by the government and the DPR to add to the swelling cost of the KCJB project are IDR 7.3 trillion. Whereas previously, this project was promised by President Jokowi that it would not use a dime from the state budget and was not guaranteed by the government.

As cited from money.kompas.com, BUMN Deputy Minister (Wamen) II Kartika Wirjoatmodjo said that one of the biggest causes of project cost overruns was the Chinese side's calculations being wrong during the feasibility study process.

He gave an example, one of the mistakes of the Chinese side in their proposal, namely not including the calculation of the cost of taking over the GSM-R frequency in the 900 MHz band which is used for high-speed train signaling.

While along the Jakarta-Bandung route, this frequency is used by Telkomsel. So that Telkomsel is willing to give up its frequency band to be divided for this project, of course KCIC has to pay a lot of money.

In addition to fighting over frequency bands, the calculation of investment costs in China's proposal is not accurate in calculating taxes, land acquisition which is very crucial in Indonesia, to the transfer of electricity and gas utilities. Where some of them are not included in the cost when submitting a proposal.

"So there are indeed costs that were not included at the beginning, now we have agreed that they must be included in the project costs because the Chinese think these are government costs, not project costs," said Tiko.

Meanwhile, several other causes of cost overruns occurred unexpectedly during the construction process, such as the complexity of the geological conditions in tunnel construction, incident incidents, pillars that were torn down and had to be rebuilt, to the theft of project iron.