Bambang Brodjonegoro: East Kalimantan Chosen As New Capital City Due To Small Disaster Risk

Former Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro. (Photo: Theresia Agatha/VOI)

JAKARTA - Jakarta is confirmed to no longer be the capital city of Indonesia. This is reflected in the government's efforts to build the capital city of Nusantara (IKN) in Penajam Paser Utara Regency, East Kalimantan (Kaltim).

Related to this, former Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Bambang Brodjonegoro revealed the reason for choosing East Kalimantan as the new capital city.

"I think many people know, in terms of disaster risk, especially disasters whose volcanology (Kaltim) is the smallest," said Bambang in a discussion on the launch of the book 9 Reasons and 8 Hopes of Moving the Capital City at the PUPR Ministry Building, Jakarta, Wednesday, August 14.

"It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We can't go ahead of those up there (by) saying for sure from the disaster side it doesn't exist, disasters can happen. But, right, we want to do risk management," he continued.

Bambang said that at that time the government had agreed to choose East Kalimantan as the new capital city because the area had a small disaster risk.

"We choose areas with the smallest risk compared to others. That there is a flood, yes, it is natural because the rainfall in Indonesia is quite high. So, we agreed with Kalimantan and then finally East Kalimantan, namely North Penajam Paser," he said.

Initially, the government chose Central Kalimantan (Central Kalimantan) as the new capital city.

However, said Bambang, the two proposed locations did not allow it to be used as capitals.

"At first we wanted Central Kalimantan, but we saw two locations in Central Kalimantan that were proposed. One is located in a peat area, so it is very risky with forest fires and the second is a bit too far and remote. So, it will be very expensive to build. So, finally we chose East Kalimantan," he said.

Because, said Bambang, in East Kalimantan itself there is indeed land that does not need to be released because it is controlled by the state.

"The two of them are far from the sea. Well, why should someone be close to the sea. This island nation will be very strange if the capital city is already an archipelagic country, but looking for the capital city all the way from the sea," he said.

Then, continued Bambang, the next reason is because the government wants to build a state and government capital which is part of an urban system.

"So, what we are building is not just a city, namely IKN. What we want to build is an urban system or what we call the Jakarta Special Region Law (DKJ) as an agglomeration. We want to create a new agglomeration between IKN Nusantara, Balikpapan and Samarinda," he concluded.