Bitung Port, Kupang ready to become international hub
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)