The Jakarta administration is preparing financing for the second phase of the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) project without waiting for the first phase to be completed.

"Learning from the process of the first phase, we should not wait from one thing to another. And we will also set strategies for the project's longevity in our future talks," Governor Fauzi Bowo said Thursday.

He said the administration would start discussing the project's second phase this month with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) — the loan provider for the project.

"We should start paving the way for the next step from now," he said at City Hall after a meeting with a number of JBIC representatives.

The project's first phase, costing up to Rp 200 billion (US$21.74 million), consists of feasibility studies, the establishment of PT MRT Jakarta, the city-owned firm that will be responsible both for the project and the MRT's operations, and the physical construction of a 14.3 kilometer line from Lebak Bulus in South Jakarta to Dukuh Atas in Central Jakarta.

The construction of the Lebak Bulus-Dukuh Atas line is scheduled to begin in 2010. The line is expected to be up and running by 2015.

The second phase of the MRT development will see physical construction of a line running from Dukuh Atas to Kota in West Jakarta.

Fauzi said the administration and the JBIC would soon draft budget allocations required for the second phase.

"We need financial schemes for the next step in addition to the technical feasibility studies we already have," he said.

The City Council is still deliberating an ordinance regulating the establishment of PT MRT Jakarta.

The secretary of the council's Commission B on economic affairs, Nurmansjah Lubis, said the council was speeding up the ordinance's deliberation and would have one more meeting Friday before completion.

"We just added a number of requirements for a number of top posts at the board of commissioners and the board of directors," he told The Jakarta Post.

The MRT development is projected to swallow up more than Rp 8.3 trillion in investment.

The project is using soft loans from the Japanese bank at an interest rate of 0.4 percent per annum for 30 years until maturity plus a 10-year grace period, the government announced last year.

The government will pay 42 percent of the loans, while the administration would cover the remainder.