Shipping key to economic development in archipelagic nation
Despite being a nation consisting of hundreds of islands, the role of sea transportation is still relatively minor and is limited to areas of high economic development.
The Transportation Ministry’s sea transportation director general Leon Muhamad recently talked to The Jakarta Post’s Nurfika Osman about what the government is doing to improve the maritime sector to help boost trade and develop the Indonesian economy. Below are some excerpts from the interview.
What is the mid-term plan for sea transportation development?
We have several major programs over the next 10 years in the sea transportation sector that are in line with the Master Plan for theAcceleration and Expansion of Indonesia’s Economy (MP3EI) program, in which the government has set aside Rp 117 trillion (US$12.75billion) from the program for the development of seaports.
The first program is the National Port Management Master Plan, a concept of how we develop ports across the country in order to support the recently established six economic corridors. We drafted this master plan because we realize that ports play a vital role in transportation and trade, especially in a vast archipelagic country like Indonesia. It is crystal clear that economic activities in Indonesia should be supported by strong maritime transportation, thus through this master plan, we will expand all ports across the country and implement better management to speed up the loading and unloading processes to help reduce logistics costs.
