Indonesian maritime issues get greater attention

Indonesian maritime issues get greater attention

Jan R. Scheele, Maritime Consultant, Jakarta

Is empowerment of the maritime transportation services the
only medicine the government is willing to inject in the ailing
national maritime industry? Which quality assurances are built in
to guarantee successful results and in how far will this
empowerment heal the current ailments of this so long neglected
industry sector?

The undersigned wishes to comment on the publication in The
Jakarta Post on Dec. 9 by Ronald Nangoi, titled: RI maritime
issues get greater attention: Better late than never?.

Allow me to first and foremost question the first statement
made by Nangoi "Indonesia being the largest maritime country in
the world". Closer to the truth would be the following statement:
"Indonesia is one of the largest Archipelago's in the world,
consisting of more than 17,000 islands, of which more than 6,000
are inhabited, covering an area as large as Europe from Iceland
in the North West to Turkey in the South East. By nature this
would have made Indonesia one of the strongest Maritime Nations
in the world, unfortunately it currently is not".

An example is the fact that less than 7 percent of the
transportation of all domestic inter island cargo volumes are
being traded by non -- Indonesian flag vessels.

Past questionable government policies (Habibie's scrapping
policy and failed new building programs) have added to the
current poor state of affairs of this industry sector, that if
well facilitated by the government and managed by the private
sector, could contribute significant to the country's national
income as rightfully mentioned by Nangoi, instead of suffering
presently opportunity losses of roughly more than US$12 billion a
year in foreign exchange.

Maritime trade in general is the oldest international or
global business, governed by the earliest examples of
international (trade) laws, amended over time as currently
applicable. I agree with the mentioned current weaknesses and the
governments inconsistency in law enforcement, but these are not
new facts, for the past 10 years the Chairman of the Indonesian
Ship owners Association (INSA) has consistently brought these
shortcomings in front of the government footlights, unfortunately
to no avail.

Indonesia's flag ship carrier PT. Djakarta Lloyd is an
overstaffed non performing, loss making Government Shipping
Company, to be kept alive by the government for the past 15
years. State owned Inter Island Passenger Shipping Line PT. Pelni
is covered in debt, and does not make any profits. The only
Indonesian ship owners who are surviving are the ones who
registered their vessels under other flags than the Indonesian
flag, hence the relative small number of ships under the national
flag.

Nangoi stated that it is part of Minister Kwik Kian Gie dream
"that in the years to come, the shipping business grows, in which
thousands of vessels largely under Indonesian flag, are getting
crowded in domestic territorial waters". I may confidently state
that under the current laws, regulations, government policies,
even through the "empowerment", whatever that means and however
ever the implementation (and action plans?) Your Excellency, keep
on dreaming.

Are their solutions to the problems on offer, to make the
minister's dream come true? The answer is yes, but to tackle the
problems seriously needs a broad governmental platform of
awareness, intergovernmental cooperation, knowledge, vision and
political will.

At present there does not exist a cohesive national (maritime)
shipping policy, which should be fundamental in supporting the
national economic and social development objectives.

Decentralization, privatization, restructuring, deregulation
and private sector participation in policy development and
formulation should be the point of departure and the central
thrust of overall government policy.

In the recent past, government attention has been highly
focussed on projects, not institutions or policies -- which in a
decentralized Indonesia are now even more important.

In closing I would offer to Kwik the suggestion to, as a first
priority to establish in cooperation with the minister of
transportations and the private maritime sector, a National
Maritime Committee, charged with the responsibility to formulate
a "National Maritime (shipping) Policy", covering in general the
ports and shipping sub sectors in Indonesia, addressing all
facets, including but not limited to:

o macro and micro economical matters

o Financial matters

o Technical matters

o Sociological matters (employment, human resources, education
and training)

o International, Regional and National legislation

o National Maritime Strategy for implementation

Initiating this initiative might be the start on the difficult
road to a healthy National Maritime Sector, which will at the end
contribute substantially to the national development and placing
Indonesia on the world maritime map, where it given its
strategically geographical position and total length of coast
line should have been.