Indonesia’s new national capital, to be built on Borneo Island, would be named “Nusantara”, a minister said on Monday.
The national parliament is expected to pass a bill on the new capital on Tuesday, paving the way for the start of its construction this year.
“I have received a confirmation from Mr President that the new capital is named Nusantara,’’ National Development Minister, Suharso Monoarfa, told reporters.
Nusantara, which means archipelago, is an old name for the Malay Archipelago, which included Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and southern parts of the Philippines.
President Joko Widodo announced in 2019 plans to build a whole new capital in the jungles of Borneo, somewhere halfway between the cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda.
He said that Jakarta was no longer viable as the country’s administrative hub because of frequent flooding, perennial traffic jams and poor air quality.
The cost of the move was estimated at more than $32 billion.
If things go according to plan, the first officials were scheduled to move into their new offices as early as 2024 the last year of Joko’s second and final term in office.
Twenty per cent of Jakarta was below sea level, and that figure was set to nearly double by 2050, according to researchers at the Bandung Institute of Technology.
Mass extraction of groundwater was partly to blame for the city’s gradual sinking.