Jakarta. The government has spent approximately Rp 11.2 trillion (around $707 million) to fund Indonesia’s future planned capital development so far this year as of the end of July.

Indonesia still has a lot of money to spare despite the large scale of the capital relocation project. The government is planning to spend no more than Rp 42.5 trillion throughout 2024 to construct Nusantara, the city that will replace Jakarta as the capital. It has only used up 26.4 percent of this year’s Nusantara budget.

According to Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, the city currently has a number of construction work packages in progress. But the government usually makes the payment once the work is complete, hence the seemingly small spending.

“Yes, we have been trying to really speed up the construction. … There are 108 work packages worth Rp 84.2 trillion under contract. But even if we have reached a contract, it does not mean we immediately give them the money. The payment usually waits after they have delivered the work or there is a contract agreement per term,” Sri Mulyani told a press conference on Tuesday.

The already-spent Rp 11.2 trillion mainly came from payments to the delivered contracts.

“But this does not mean the yearly spending would only reach Rp 11.2 trillion [by the end of 2024]. ... We usually speed up the fund disbursement in the third, fourth quarter,” Sri Mulyani, who had just returned from a business trip to Nusantara, said.

Nusantara's infrastructure development consumed Rp 9 trillion of the state budget throughout the first seven months of 2024. The money went to the construction of the state palace complex, civil servants’ housing, and the VVIP airport, to name a few. The government has set aside Rp 39.3 trillion for the city's infrastructure work throughout 2024.

Indonesia also used up Rp 2.2 trillion for non-infrastructure needs, including the city’s operations and planning.

The government’s expenditure for the Nusantara megaproject has been on a significant rise over the past years. The spending hit Rp 5.5 trillion in 2022 before it jumped to Rp 27 trillion the following year, and eventually Rp 42.5 trillion in 2024. This brings the total state money dedicated to the Nusantara project throughout 2022-2024 to Rp 75 trillion.

It is set to cost a whopping $33 billion to build Nusantara from scratch. The government, however, only intends to finance 20 percent of the total costs as the country hopes to secure the rest of the money from private investors.