Bitung Port, Kupang ready to become international hub

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Bitung Port in North Sulawesi is on the brink of becoming an international port as its infrastructure is up to standard and new investors are coming in.

"Bitung (North Sulawesi) along with Kupang (East Nusa Tenggara) will be developed as international hub ports," the Ministry of Transportations' director of sea transportation Tjuk Sukardiman said on Monday on the sidelines of a seminar on Partnership in Developing a Competitive Seaport.

The original master plan jointly prepared by the government and state port operator PT Pelindo IV showed that Bitung Port would be fully developed as an international port by 2015.

Tjuk said Bitung would be fully-developed in three phases.

The Regional Investment Coordinating Board (BKPMD) has urged authorities to speed up the plan as new investors are showing interest.

The first phase of the development of Bitung Port, located some 50 kilometers to the east of North Sulawesi's capital city Manado, was completed in November 2004 with an annual capacity of 200,000 TEUs -- twenty-feet equivalent units, a measurement based on how many containers could be unloaded in a port.

The government is planning to develop the port into a larger project called Bitung Lembeh Megaport, which would serve as a transshipment port for cargo traffic from Europe and Australia. A free trade zone would also be located in the area.

Bitung Port's sea area of 4.32 hectares has a minimum depth of 16 meters, allowing large ships with bigger loads to dock.

"Bitung has been recommended by a study conducted by the JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) in 1998 as an option for a transshipment port," BKPMD corporate secretary Adriantono said.

The strategic location of Bitung Port had attracted an investor from Taiwan to occupy 150 hectares of land, a kilometer away from the port, to open its electronics and information technology products plant, he claimed.

He said the project would start as soon as the memorandum of understanding was signed at the end of April.

"Another investor from the Philippines has also shown interest in building a silo to temporarily stock its imported grain from Brazil before its distributed in his country," Adriantono explained.

With new investors coming in, the current 80,000-TEUs capacity would be increased to full capacity at 200,000 TEUs, thus requiring the acceleration of the second phase. While the original plan had been for the second phase to be completed in 2010, this was not soon enough, he said. (003)