Public transportation urged to use gas fuels

The government has urged public transportation owners to use gas fuel in a bid to help create a healthier environment in big cities such as Jakarta, according to Minister of Industry and Trade Luhut B. Pandjaitan.

"All public utilities, especially city busses, must since now on use gas fuel before this policy is applied to all kind of vehicles," Luhut said over the weekend.

He said the for the first stage, the government would only requires public transportation owners to use gas fuel, but later by 2003, the government aimed to target wider ranges of vehicles users to use gas fuels.

He said city busses in Jakarta and Surabaya, including those to be imported from China, must be equipped with converters so that they could consume gas fuel for their operation.

He said that the government would encourage auto parts manufacturers to produce converters so that their prices would be cheaper than the imported ones.

In addition, Luhut said the government would encourage more investment to build gas fuel stations.

The director general of oil and gas at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Rachmat Sudibyo, acknowledged that the use of gas fuel in Indonesia, including by public transportation vehicles, was still at a very low level.

Rachmat noted that the low use of gas fuel by vehicles in Indonesia was caused by the low prices of diesel oil that was still subsidized by the government. As long as the diesel oil was subsidized, people would continue to use diesel oil.

To encourage the use of gas fuel, Rachmat said the government must abolish the subsidy to diesel oil and transfer the subsidy to gas fuel through an incentive for domestic gas prices (IHGD).

However, the chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Aburizal Bakrie, criticized the government's plan to promote gas use and reduce the use of oil, as thus far, there was no clarity about the plan. (*)