Govt calls for aircraft maintenance facility
Govt calls for aircraft maintenance facility
JAKARTA (JP): The government says it will invite local and
overseas companies to open an aircraft maintenance facility
within the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines growth area to
stimulate local economic growth.
The invitation is one of the proposed measures to spur the
development of the East ASEAN Growth Area (EAGA) which links the
boundary areas of the four countries, the Minister of
Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto said in a statement read out
at a seminar on "ASEAN Strategies and Action" yesterday.
The seven-nation ASEAN group includes Brunei, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The
EAGA includes Brunei, southern Philippines, Malaysia and
Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Maluku of Indonesia. The growth area was
created to stimulate tourism, industry and agriculture.
In his statement read out by chairman of the Research and
Development Agency of the Ministry of Transportation Soebagijo
Soemodihardjo, Haryanto said that other proposals included an
invitation to private firms to extend the airports in the growth
area.
"The open sky policy may also be adopted by the participating
nations and the airlines of the nations are encouraged to set up
joint airline facilities to serve the region.
"The EAGA's working group on air links concluded recently that
the load factors of the airlines serving the growth area are very
low, so joint operations among the airlines are feasible for the
region," he said.
He said that Indonesia will improve the seaports and airports
in its territories covered by EAGA to stimulate tourism and
trade.
"We are improving the seaports at Bitung in North Sulawesi and
Balikpapan in East Kalimantan and the airports in Manado, North
Sulawesi, and Pontianak, West Kalimantan.
If the proposed aircraft maintenance facility in the EAGA
growth area is realized, it will be the third of its kind in the
country. Indonesia has an aircraft maintenance facility in
Jakarta which is owned by state-owned Garuda Indonesia. The other
facility is on Batam island in Riau. It is owned by Indonesian
and Singaporean parties, and is still under construction.
At a recent meeting in Bali, the ASEAN agreed to gradually
liberalize air transport services in its growth areas. The EAGA
will be the first growth area to do this. The other target
regions are the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle and
the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle.
The policy to give ASEAN countries' airlines better access to
the regions is to encourage the development of tourism there.
At yesterday's seminar, Minister of Tourism, Post and
Telecommunications Joop Ave said that despite the cooperation
among ASEAN members to boost tourism, the competition among the
countries had to continue.
"It's true that we have formed intelligent cooperation, but
it's nonsense to abandon competition because each of the nations
has its own national interests," Joop said. "Meanwhile, the
pattern of international travel will change. Europeans, for
instance, previously only traveled to Indonesia or Thailand in
Asia, but now they also visit nearby countries."
He said the East Asia-Pacific region will continue to be one
of the most popular destinations for international tourists in
the world.
"Based on data from the World Tourism Organization, there were
567 million international tourist arrivals there last year with
international tourist revenue of US$373 billion," he said.
The number of international tourist arrivals had increased by
41.5 percent since 1970 and the international tourist revenue had
increased by almost 2,000 percent.
Joop said that 700 million international tourists were
expected to arrive there in the year 2000.
"The East Asia-Pacific region will have a high growth rate of
arrivals of 15.3 percent," he said. (icn)