February 27, 2025
JAKARTA – President Prabowo Subianto has said funding is in place for the construction of a 700-kilometer seawall from Banten to East Java to combat land subsidence along the northern coast of Java.
“Can we do it? Yes, we can. I don’t know how long it will take, but insya Allah [God willing], with strong determination, we will make it happen […]. Do not doubt it, we will start as soon as possible,” he said during a speech at the Democratic Party’s congress on Tuesday.
Prabowo has ordered widespread government budget cuts to save over Rp 306 trillion (US$18.72 billion) to finance his priority programs, namely the free nutritious meal program and the establishment of sovereign wealth fund Danantara. The cost-saving measures are expected to continue next year.
As part of the cuts, the Public Works Ministry saw its budget drop from around Rp 111 trillion to just over Rp 50 trillion.
The President also said Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the party’s chairman and the son of its patriarch, would have “a heavy task” in overseeing the project in his role as coordinating infrastructure and regional development minister.
According to Investment and Downstream Minister Rosan Roeslani, President Prabowo has invited Japanese companies to take part in the project. He made his pitch at a meeting with a business delegation from the Japan-Indonesia Association (Japinda) at his offices in December last year.
Rosan said the potential cooperation with Japan would remain flexible and could involve business-to-business (B2B) or government-to-government (G2G) schemes or a public-private partnership (KPBU).
Government officials signaled on multiple occasions that the country would be unable to finance the entire project on its own, with the previous government estimating in January of last year that the final bill could be up to US$60 billion.
Tycoon Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo’s brother, previously said companies from China, South Korea and the Netherlands had expressed interest in the seawall project. He forecast that construction could take up to 20 years.
He added that efforts to achieve food sustainability by developing food estates in Kalimantan and Papua would be futile if millions of hectares of farmland along the northern coast of Java, the country’s most productive agricultural region, were submerged by rising seas.
To expedite the seawall’s development, Prabowo had asked that the project be included in the national strategic project (PSN) list for 2025, Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto said in November of last year.
The government grants favorable terms to projects listed on the PSN, including in land acquisition and permit issuance.
The idea of building a giant seawall for Jakarta was first proposed in 1994 by then-president Soeharto. Prabowo revived the plan during his campaign for president in 2024.
However, the project was met with criticism from experts, who said a seawall would not solve land subsidence in Jakarta and warned that building such a massive seawall could instead exacerbate the issue.