TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko Widodo held talks with a delegation from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at the Merdeka Palace on Friday.
At the meeting, the president was accompanied by National Development Planning Minister/Head of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) Sofyan Djalil and Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro, according to Antara.
ADB President Takehiko Nakao and his delegation arrived at the Merdeka Palace at 9:10 a.m. local time.
On Thursday, Takehiko met Vice President Jusuf Kalla to offer an increase in the amount of ADBs loans to Indonesia to finance infrastructure development in the country.
The ADBs loans to the Indonesian government continued to increase from US$710 million in 2014 to US$1.5 billion in 2015.
"We want to support development in Indonesia not only in the infrastructure sector but also in the education, public finance, and private sectors," he affirmed.
Meanwhile, Bappenas deputy head for development funding Wismana Adi Suryabrata noted that the new scheme offered by ADB differed from the three previous schemes: result-based lending, direct lending, and conventional loans.
"They have offered to disburse loans based on the funding needs of the state budget projects. Hence, it does not just deal with procurement. However, once the projects have been completed but face a shortage of funds, then the ADB can cover the deficit," he added.
ANTARA
