Indonesia has put on the backburner President Joko Widodo's ambitious US$33-billion project to relocate the capital city to the island of Borneo ...
Making a frank admission of the obstacles to the project, he said groundbreaking could be delayed until 2022 or 2023, as the government focuses efforts on finding, and then distributing, a COVID-19 vaccine to the population of nearly 270 million.
Civil servants were due to start moving by 2024, which should mark the final year of Widodo's second term in office. SoftBank's chief executive Masayoshi Son, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed al Nahyan have been enlisted as advisers for the project.
Nor could Indonesia now afford to move its capital, as the pandemic's strain on the national budget leads to a ballooning fiscal deficit, another economist said.
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