Jakarta: State-owned construction company PT Waskita Karya is in the process of selling five toll roads this year and says it already has buyers for two of them.“We just closed deals for the (Surakarta-Ngawi) and Ngawi-Kertosono toll roads,” Waskita president director I Gusti Ngurah Putra was quoted as saying on Tuesday by kontan.co.id.
He was referring to toll roads in Central Java and East Java.
Putra said the administrative aspects of the agreements were being worked out and the final deals were expected to be executed next month.
He declined to reveal the buyers of the roads, but Astra Group had previously expressed interest in buying them.
The three other toll roads that are expected to be released this year are Kanji-Pejagan, Pejagan-Pemalang and Pasuruan-Probolinggo.
In total, Waskita plans to sell 18 of its toll roads.
The company had to sell its toll roads because it needed fresh money to cover the investment to develop them, Putra said.
He added that it could not wait two to three years for the income of the toll road’s operation.
He also noted that Waskita needed to pay interest on loans that it had used to build the toll roads and to conduct land acquisition for toll road projects, which was actually the responsibility of the government.
The government would pay once the projects were completed, he said.
Putra added that the company’s receivables from the government had reached 17 trillion rupiah (RM4.9bil). — The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
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