Indonesia’s Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi says he’s still evaluating the development plan for a IDR27 trillion (US$1.9 billion) project that would see the construction of an international airport in North Bali.
The minister will be evaluating things like environmental impact–the airport would be built on reclaimed land in Kubu Tambahan, Buleleng.
“Six months (for the evaluation), after which we will decide later whether we will go through with it,” Sumadi said on Sunday, as quoted by CNN Indonesia.
The quiet regency of Buleleng, where relatively few tourists travel to, is about 90 kilometers north of busy tourist hub Kuta.
Bali’s current governor Made Mangku Pastika has been a huge proponent of the airport, insisting it will usher in even more tourists and will spread the development out to the island’s rural north as a tourism destination of its own.
There has been talk of an airport up on Bali’s lesser-developed north end for years, but little action. This is partly because of the challenge of land acquisition, an obstacle that the project hopes to sidestep by instead reclaiming land to build an artificial island.
But while the transport minister’s words on the proposed project seem a tad non-committal, others seem much more sure that the airport will happen.
Pastika previously sent a letter to the president’s office to encourage the development of the project. In response, President Joko Widodo issued a letter of his own in November 2017 to the Minister of Transportation, B-1033/M.State Secretariat/B-1/HK.04.02/11/2017, essentially insisting the project go through and that the ministry lower obstacles for the construction to be realized.
The airport with two runways would take up an area of 1,060 ha, according to North Bali International Airport (BIBU) president director, I Made Mangku. The runways would be 4,100 meters long.
“We have already planned for wide-bodied aircraft to be landed there, the biggest one probably the size of the Airbus 380, like for the flight from Bali to Los Angeles. That’s why we made it it 4,100 meters,” Mangku told Tribun Bali.
Backing the project is the primary investor, Canadian Kinesis Capital, along with other private investors.
