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)