Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The government will face difficulties in carrying out its oil-to-gas conversion plan in the auotomotive sector and, if it forces the plan, it will create problems, a legislator said.

"The government has not yet made enough preparations to carry out the plan," Sadar Subagyo of the House of Representatives Commission XI on national development planning and financial affairs, said here on Saturday.

He said that before it carried out the plan, the government should first prepare its supporting infrastructures. Infrastructures to support the program have not yet been made at the people`s level.

"Thus, the program will only create a chance for individuals to engage in `political dealings` to obtain benefit such as the creation of new projects on the pretext of the energy conversion program," he said.

He said that the main reason why the government wanted motorists to replace fuel oils with gas was the amount of subsidy which continued to increase but it had so far missed the target while government itself had no courage to abolish it.

Indeed, if the government was determined to lift the fuel oil subsidy and use the funds to build infrastructures, it would be able to overcome various problems such as traffic woes, he said.

In Jakarta for example, he said, fuel oil subsidy reached Rp20 trillion, and if the funds were used to build a subway which cost only Rp15 trillion or monorail that needed only Rp7 trillion, then in one year all transportation infrastructures could be overcome.
(Uu.A014/HAJM/H-YH)

Editor: Priyambodo RH
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