Indonesian Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry partnering with the private transportation sector will launch a natural gas-powered taxis program in a bid to cut the country's huge subsidized gasoline consumption, a minister said here Monday.

Energy and Mineral Minister Jero Wacik said the program converting gasoline-powered taxis to natural gas-power program will be applied this year, expecting to slow down the increasing trend of subsidized fuel consumption.

Indonesia, a former OPEC member and Asia's largest gasoline importer, spent 211.9 trillion rupiah (some 22 billion U.S. dollars) on subsidizing fuel in 2012, contributing to the current account swinging to a deficit of 24.18 billion U.S. dollars.

"We have already motivated and discussed with the private companies, and taxis will use the compressed natural gas (CNG) later," Jero said, as quoted by Indonesia news portal inilah.com.

The minister said the taxi operators will build natural gas infrastructure such as the gas filling stations in the taxi pools to facilitate the access to CNG for taxis, adding that filling stations is not the obstacle to implement the program.

Indonesia has huge domestic gas reserves and is the world's third largest liquefied natural gas exporter. Endi

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