Indonesia's Su-35 Deal to be Signed This Year

On the sidelines of the Russia-ASEAN summit in Sochi, Vladimir Putin met Joko Widodo. Besides the $13.8 billion agreement between Rosneft and Pertamina, the countries announced plans to cooperate further. What steps are Indonesia and Russia taking to follow up on these plans?

After the meeting in Sochi, the business interest from both sides is increasing quite significantly. For example, with Rosneft and Pertamina, after the signing of the main agreement there was another agreement at the technical level. Pertamina officials were here recently and we’re expecting them again soon. The cooperation between Rosneft and Pertamina is quite serious.

Indonesian Railways and Russian Railways have signed a MoU. It is not only for the railway in East Kalimantan, but we are looking to extend the cooperation to Java, which is the most densely populated island in Indonesia. Around 55 percent of the Indonesian population live in Java. We have the Jakarta-Surabaya railway, which is about 700 kilometers.  At the moment, both countries are trying to figure the best way to cooperate in Java.

What we are looking for is a train service like the high-speed service (Sapsan) that connects Moscow with St. Petersburg. We don’t need a 340 km per hour train with very high technology but expensive. There has already been a discussion on how to use the existing railway system. Technically we can have a 200 km per hour train by upgrading the existing system.  If you can get to Surabaya from Jakarta in four and half hours with 10 stops, more people will go by train.  It’s only one hour by flight, but sometimes it takes two hours to get to the Jakarta airport from the city.  You need to check in an hour before the flight and then again it takes an hour to get to Surabaya from the airport.

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