Jakarta, Nov 5 — The government plans to build power generating plants with a total capacity of 35,000 megawatts in five years to come.
Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said said construction of new power plants is designed to cope with shortfall in power supply in the next three years.
“This is not a small project. In addition to catching up on the fact of being fallen behind the capacity target is needed to keep up with the economic targets,” Sudirman told reporters here on Tuesday.
For that purpose, the government would invite investors from any countries to carry out the project, he said.
He pledges to issue regulation that would make it easier for investors such as in licensing procedure that they would feel convenient in doing business in the country.
He said the project target include carryover in backlog from previous years.
There was big backlog as project implementation fell short of targets with the countrys economic growth not up to target in the past several years.
Sudirman said he had discussed the project with state power utility PLN including problem in land clearing, licensing, capacity of contractors and real capacity of business players.
“The contracts have to be reviewed as there was no progress made in some of the projects. We will discuss it again on Saturday and next week there would new formulas,” he said.
He said unless steps are taken immediately, there would be worse crisis in power supply with requirement growing faster than supply.
Electricity Director General Jarman said additional supply of 35,000 MW is designed to meet power requirement of more than 50,000 gigawatts in the next five years.
The requirement could be higher depending on the condition in the future, Jarman said.
PLN President Director Nur Pamudji said after the meeting with the minister, that PLNs share in the capacity provision is around of 15,000 MW with Independent Power Producers (IPP) expected to build power plants with a total capacity of 20,000 MW.
“It is subject to change. It is not a fixed figure,” Nur said.
He said the cost of building a power plant is around US$1.5 million per MW, and the cost for transmission system is around US$1 billion.
The priority types of power plant to be built in 2015 are coal-fired power plants (PLTU) and gas fired power plant (PLTG).
He said land clearing remains a big hurdle besides licensing, financing and rent seeking Mafia.
