For rent: 10,000 Indonesian islands

JAKARTA (JP): The government hopes to rent 10,000 small uninhabited islands to local and foreign investors, an official at the Ministry of Maritime Exploration said.

The islands would be rented out to bring in foreign exchange revenue and help even out population distribution, the director general of coastal areas, beaches and small islands, Rohmin Dahuri, said.

"This would put idle resources to good use," he said on Tuesday.

Developing islands in remote areas would also enhance security against trespassers, he said.

"Illegal fishing ships would think twice about trespassing because the islands would no longer be uninhabited."

Rohmin said Indonesia had 17,508 islands, of which around 10,000 were uninhabited.

Interested parties could use the islands as bases for their fleets of fishing ships operating in economic exclusive zones, for the cultivation of seaweed and fish or for maritime tourism and conservation, he said.

"Many of our islands contain endemic species or species that are only found there," he said. "International conservation agencies are very interested in preserving them."

Rohmin said foreign investors from Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia had expressed interest in renting islands, particularly for tourism purposes.

Local investors are more interested in renting islands closer to population centers, while foreign investors are interested in islands in the open sea, he said.

The islands would most likely be rented out under a 35-year lease similar to the method by which the government awards forestry concessions to foreign logging companies, Rohmin said.

The plan to rent out the islands must still be approved by the coordinating minister for the economy, finance and industry, and the provincial administrations, he said.

"The idea is only a month old so we've only reached the consolidation stage and are drafting the concept, but we are optimistic it can be realized by 2001 at the earliest," he said.

Rohmin said profits from leased islands within a 12-mile zone of a province would be divided according to existing regulations, which means 80 percent of the profit would go to the region and 20 percent to the central government. (bkm/10)