China Says Fast Train Debt Talks with Indonesia on ‘Right Track’

China Says Fast Train Debt Talks with Indonesia on ‘Right Track’

Jayanty Nada Shofa

June 24, 2026 | 2:22 pm

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The Whoosh high-speed railway crosses Ngamprah, West Bandung, on July 31, 2025. (Antara Photo/Abdan Syakura)

Jakarta. A Chinese diplomat said Wednesday that fast train debt renegotiation with Indonesia had been going smoothly, but refused to disclose the terms on the table.

Indonesia has been seeking to restructure the Chinese debt that it had taken to construct the $7.3 billion high-speed rail that connects the capital Jakarta and West Java's Bandung. Southeast Asia's biggest economy had borrowed money from the government-owned China Development Bank to cover 75% of the costs.

Jakarta last year entered talks with Beijing to make the loan easier to repay. Fast forward to April 2026, sovereign wealth fund Danantara -- which also oversees the project’s majority stakeholder Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) -- claimed that it had finalized the debt restructuring plan. To the press, Chinese Ambassador to Indonesia Wang Lutong admitted that the negotiations were still underway.

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“We are keeping in very close contact with the related people and the [Indonesian] ministry here. Everything is going well,” Wang said at a conference held by foreign policy think-tank FPCI in Jakarta on Wednesday.

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Asked whether both sides had shaken hands on a deal, Wang admitted it was impossible to reveal the details during ongoing discussions. He also replied: “Everything is on the right track”.

President Prabowo Subianto has recently ordered a major shake-up of the government committee overseeing the project. Chief Infrastructure Minister Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono is at the helm, replacing former investment tsar Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.

Agus recently refreshed Indonesia’s plan to extend the bullet train -- also known as Whoosh -- to East Java's Surabaya.

“But we are still working on the concept, and of course, we have to make sure that the Jakarta-Bandung train has no problems first before we forge ahead with the plan,” Agus told the press shortly after a closed-door meeting with Danantara.

He signaled that a public service agency under the Finance Ministry would be the operator of this train, but did not expand on how this scheme would work.

Whoosh reported that its annual ridership reached 6.2 million passengers throughout last year. The construction had faced heaps of problems, including ballooning costs, land acquisition issues, and pandemic-related delays.