JAKARTA. Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan has said the world's largest investment manager, BlackRock, is interested in participating in financing the construction of the Jakarta light rail transit (LRT) project.

“Black Rock, a fund manager that has around US$5.3 trillion in capital, said they wanted to participate,” Luhut said after inspecting the construction of the Cibubur-Cawang line in East Jakarta on FRiday.

He said the company was convinced by the government that the project was bankable.

Previous reports said that financial consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) projected that the rate of return of the LRT project would be 10 percent.

Luhut said it was still being discussed whether funding of the scheme would be through syndication, capital investment or some other form.

“They are still discussing with our team about the scheme. We'll see later,” he said.

BlackRock is a New York-based investment manager. The company reportedly has $5.1 trillion of assets under management (AUM) on Dec. 31, 2016. In 2014, BlackRock ranked 240th in the world's largest companies in the Global 2000 list by Forbes business magazine, with a total market value of $53.1 billion and total assets of $220.6 billion. (dis/bbn)