"Yes, more or less Rp70.1 trillion for 65 dams," head of the Dam Center at the Directorate General of Water Resources Imam Santoso said in a news conference.
The projects would be financed with fund from the state budget around Rp64.04 trillion and loans from China Rp4.82 trillion for the Jatigede dam and from South Korea Rp1.26 trillion for the Karian dam.
Imam said building a water reservoir would take three to four years, therefore, among the 65 dam projects, 29 are to be completed in 2019 and the rest in 2022.
"The 65 dams would increase the capacity of water reservoirs in the country to 19.1 billion cubic meters from only 12.6 billion cubic meters at present," he said.
The additional dams would certainly increase the irrigation capacity for farm lands, he added.
Currently , the country has 7.1 million hectares of rice fields and 760,000 hectares or more than 10 percent of them are irrigated with water from dams. The rest are irrigated with water from rivers or rain fed rice fields.
With the 65 new dams , rice fields irrigated with water from dams would be 173,000 hectares wider to 933,000 hectares, he said.
"Therefore, the need for irrigation water could be meet the whole years that the water and food security would be better guaranteed," he said.
Based on official data at the Directorate General of Water Resources in 2015, construction of five dams was already completed and 24 other dams were under construction. This year construction would start for 8 new dams .
In 2017, work would start for the construction of nine more dams , to be followed with 11 projects in 2018 and 8 more projects in 2019 bringing the total to 65 dams.
The five dams already built and completed in 2015 are Rajui dam in Aceh, Jatigede dam in West Java, Bajulmati dam in East Java, Nipah dam in East Java, and Titab dam in Bali.
The dam projects expected to be completed this year are the Paya Seunara dam in Aceh and Teritip dam in East Kalimantan.
Other dams to be completed in 2017 are the Raknamo and Mila dams in East Nusa Tenggara, Tanju dam in West Nusa Tenggara and Marangkayu dam in East Kalimantan.
In 2018, there are seven dam projects to be completed including Gondang dam in Central Java, Tugu dam in East Java, Logung dam in Central Java, Rotiklod dam in East Nusa Tenggara, Sei Gong dam in Risua Islands, Bintang Bano dam in West Nusa Tenggara and Kuningan dam in West Java.
In 2019, there are 11 more dam projects to come on stream including Passeloreng dam in South Sulawesi, Tapin dam in South Kalimantan, Ciawi dam in West Java , Sukamahi in West Java , etc.
The remaining 36 dam projects are to be completed in the following years until 2022.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2016
