Nusantara was meant to embody Indonesia’s future: a green, modern capital rising from Borneo’s forests. But amid funding cuts and political indifference, the US$28.6 billion project risks becoming a costly monument to unfinished ambition.
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The eventual plan? Moving the seat of government there from Jakarta. But this is now clouded by uncertainty after President Prabowo Subianto made no meaningful mention of the city in recent speeches.
Officials insist the project remains on track, but analysts argue that Prabowo’s silence, combined with a sharp cut in funding, signals the project may be shelved or substantially slowed as his administration pivots towards expensive populist programmes.
The new capital was the signature project of former president Joko Widodo, who unveiled the idea in a state of the nation address in 2019. He envisioned a “smart forest city” carved out of the Bornean jungle: environmentally sustainable and designed to spread wealth more evenly across the archipelago, instead of all economic activity being heavily concentrated on Java.
Nusantara was intended to replace congested, flood-prone Jakarta, a city of 10 million that is slowly sinking under its own weight.
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But six years on, Widodo’s successor has mentioned Nusantara only once – fleetingly – during his own state address to the People’s Consultative Assembly on August 15.