Staff Of Minister Erick Thohir Denies There Is A Hidden Debt Of The High-speed Train Project

A number of workers complete a track on the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project in Tambun, Bekasi Regency, West Java, Monday, October 11. (Photo: Fakhri Hermansyah/Antara)

JAKARTA - Special Staff to the Minister of SOEs, Arya Sinulingga, emphasized that there is no hidden Chinese debt related to the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project which is now attracting public attention.

According to him, all debts are recorded in Bank Indonesia's Foreign Commercial Loans (PKLN).

"There is absolutely no hidden debt from China for the high-speed rail project because everything is recorded at Bank Indonesia's PKLN," said Arya in a statement quoted in Jakarta, reported by Antara, Saturday, October 16.

"China's hidden debt for the high-speed rail project, it's really a hoax and tendentious," he added.

Previously, the research institute AidData said there was hidden debt from China. The term hidden debt appeared in a report entitled Banking on the Belt and Road made last September. The report analyzed data on 13,427 projects in 165 countries worth US$843 billion. The projects are financed by more than 300 Chinese government agencies and state-owned agencies.

In its report, AidData said that China's hidden debt to Indonesia reached 17.28 billion US dollars, equivalent to 1.6 percent of Indonesia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

AidData defines hidden debt as debt owed by China to developing countries not through the borrowing country's government, but through state enterprises, state-owned banks, special purpose entities, joint ventures, and private sector institutions.

In the Statistics of Indonesia's Foreign Debt (SULNI) compiled and published monthly by Bank Indonesia and the Ministry of Finance, Indonesia's total external debt (ULN) from China was US$21.12 billion at the end of July 2021.

The amount of foreign debt is divided into two, namely the debt managed by the government which is managed by the government of 1.66 billion US dollars and the debt of SOEs and the private sector with a total of 19.46 billion US dollars.