The Indonesian government through the Sarana Multi Infrastruktur (SMI) will launch the tender process for the Jakarta airport rail Link project through a public private partnership in October this year.

The plans to issue the tender process have been postponed from August to October due to the fact that agreements with several stakeholders still need to be finalized. In fact, the Indonesian government is yet to underwrite part of the required investment, Rp13.5 trillion (US$ $1.15 billion).

Land acquisition is another issue that needs to be completed before the project is launched.

In March 2012, AECOM was selected to prepare the feasibility study.

The total project investment is estimated at Rp27 trillion (US$2.3 billion).

The project will link Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in East Jakarta. 

The project involves the design, build, finance, operation and maintenace of the new rail line. In addition the preferred bidder will have to procure the rolling stock. 

According to Hanggoro Budi Wiryawan, the traffic and transportation director at the Transportation Ministry's railway directorate general, around 19 international and domestic investors are interested in the project. These include several international construction companies from China, South Korea, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Soekarno-Hatta Airport (SHIA), which serves Jakarta, is the world's 9th busiest and the third busiest airport in Asia by trade body Airports Council International. SHIA moves more passengers than Dubai, New York-JFK, Singapore or Hong Kongand.

In 2013, Soekarno-Hatta handled a total of 62.1 million passengers, a 3.7 percentage point growth from the previous year (60 million).

The government expects that the total number of passengers of Soekarno-Hatta will have increased to 80 million per year by 2019 or 2020.