'Foreign cargo aircraft must land in Batam'

JAKARTA (JP): No foreign cargo plane may land in Indonesia, except at Batam's Hang Nadim airport, Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto said yesterday.

This decision is expected to stimulate the role of domestic airlines in air freight services and help the establishment of Hang Nadim as the country's air cargo center, he said.

He did not say when the ruling came into effect, nor if a law had been drafted for that purpose.

"I have already rejected the requests of (foreign airfreight companies) Federal Express, UPS and TNT that want to freely enter Indonesia. They may only enter Batam to load and unload cargo, while storage and distribution will be done by domestic fleets," he said at a seminar.

Haryanto said that exports of tuna fish from Manado (North Sulawesi) and Bali were exempted from the ruling because they decayed easily.

Chief executive officers and senior executives of several airlines, Director General of Air Transportation Zainuddin Sikado, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Transportation Muchtarudin Siregar and the head of the Ministry of Transportation's Research and Development division, Soebagijo, were at the seminar on airlines and globalization.

Haryanto said that after entering Batam, international air cargo would be freighted in Indonesia by national airlines, including state-owned Garuda Indonesia.

Garuda earlier this week launched its first Boeing 737-200C cargo jet to operate scheduled services to major cities in eastern Indonesia, including Surabaya (East Java), Denpasar (Bali), Ujungpandang (South Sulawesi), Manado (North Sulawesi), Biak and Jayapura (both in Irian Jaya).

Haryanto urged foreign cargo fleets yesterday to touch down in Batam, saying that landing fees and turbo fuel (Avtur) were less expensive than at Singapore's Changi airport.

The Batam development authority provides ferry services to Singapore free of immigration inspections, he said.

Hang Nadim airport, about 20 kilometers southeast of Singapore, is being developed as an international transport center for scheduled and chartered passenger and cargo flights.

An expansion project at the airport was launched last December. The airport is one of the country's 19 international gateways.

The airport has a 4,000-meter runway, and can service seven wide-bodied and six smaller-bodied aircraft.

Sikado said last month that domestic airlines should be protected to "avoid what has happened in sea cargo transportation".

Indonesian ships carry only 2.3 percent of the country's exports and imports. (pwn)