Chinese Ambassador Refuses to Comment on Bullet Train Project
8 September 2015 19:10 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Chinese ambassador for Indonesia Xie Feng met with Vice President Jusuf Kalla on Tuesday, September 8, 2015. Feng said that he met with Jusuf Kalla to deliver an an invitation to a conference that will be held in China on September 18, 2015.
Feng said that China and Indonesia has great potential for export in the Asian region. According to Feng, Indonesia and China are developing countries that play a huge role in the global economy. However, Feng refuses to provide any comment for the bullet train project.
China and Japan are the two countries that had competed for the Jakarta-Bandung bullet train project. However, Coordinating Minister for Economy Darmin Nasution said last week that President Joko Widodo has decided to cancel the bullet train development.
The project was cancelled because the distance between Jakarta and Bandung is only 150 kilometers away while a bullet train can reach a top speed of around 300 kilometers per hour. Therefore, the government decided that it would be more cost-effective to develop an intermediate-speed train. Darmin estimated that an intermediate-speed train will be 30 to 40 percent cheaper compared to a bullet train.
FAIZ NASHRILLAH