Posted 29 July 2000 @ 09:34
JAKARTA, 29 July 2000 - The Jakarta administration has failed to clinch a soft loan from the Chinese government for the purchase of new buses from the country but will still buy Chinese buses under a new scheme, Governor Sutiyoso said on Friday."We attempted to secure the Chinese soft loan but to no avail and now there is a consortium."I hope everything will go smoothly with this new scheme," the governor told reporters at City Hall.
Sutiyoso said a consortium willing to provide bank guarantees had already been formed to procure new buses from China.New buses are urgently needed to replace the city's aging and rapidly deteriorating fleet."The consortium allows the bus operators to pay only 20 percent of the cost of a bus. Bank guarantees will take care of the remaining amount," he said. The governor, however, failed to name the consortium or the bank or banks participating in the scheme.
In May, the Chinese government offered a soft loan to the city administration via the State Ministry of Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises for the purchase of the buses.It has also been reported that the city administration had prepared a bus replacement program worth more than Rp 1.5 trillion (US$166,666,000) using the soft loan.
Sutiyoso did not say which party had canceled the soft loan, nor did he give a reason.But the governor insisted that Jakarta would keep to its word and purchase buses from Beijing."We'll still buy buses from China because of their good quality and low price. As for the old buses, we'll sell them out of town," he said.
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