Kalla, Chinese VP to sign power deals
Saturday, April 22 2006 - 12:52 AM WIB
The agreement will be signed by Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who is now in China on an official visit, and his Chinese counterpart Zeng Qinghong in Boao, Hainan province.
?If we can complete the draft agreement today, then we can sign it tomorrow,?Vice President Kalla was quoted as saying Friday by Antara news agency.
Kalla said that the agreement .would cover funding as well as the supply of equipment for the power projects. The news agency, however, did not mention whether the agreement would cover all of the power plants to be built under the crash program or just some of them.
According to the Vice President, the government had turned to China for the construction of the power plants as investors from that country were offering construction costs of about US$700,000 per MW much lower than the almost $1 million per MW offered by companies from other countries.
The government is preparing a crash program to build several non-oil power plants with total capacity of about 10,000 MW to prevent an electricity crisis within two or three years and minimize state electricity company PLN?s dependence on oil-based power generation, which at present accounts for about 30 percent of its total generating capacity.
The construction would also help the country save on generating costs of up to Rp 40 trillion ($4.49 million) a year.
Separately, Industry Minister Fahmi Idris said in Jakarta on Friday that he hoped local companies would also be allowed to participate in the crash program.
?Ideally, local companies should be given the opportunity to provide half of the 10,000 MW power supply to be generated under the crash program,? he said.
The minister said that many local companies were both technically and fin?ncially capable of building coal-fired, geothermal and hydro power plants. (*)