Jakarta's Tanjung Priok container ports congested
Jakarta's Tanjung Priok container ports congested
JAKARTA (JP): Congestion has caused delays in export deliveries and prevented ships from berthing at the Tanjung Priok port over the last several days.
ANteve reported yesterday that scores of local businessmen are "anxious" not only because they have had to pay fines for the delays but because they may also lose their export orders.
Several ships were floating idly at the port as they waited for their turns to load or unload goods to or from the port's container terminals.
Republika quoted a port official yesterday as saying that the port's two-container terminal could no longer cope with the increasing flow of goods.
The number of containers coming in and out of Jakarta's container port this year is expected to reach 1.4 million Twenty Equivalent Units (TEUs), while they have a combined capacity to accommodate only 1.2 million TEUs.
The data also show that the two terminals are the gates for around 65 percent of Indonesia's total exports and imports.
U.S.-based investment bank Merrill Lynch said that the country's exports this year will likely reach US$43.5 billion and its imports $36.5 billion.
PT Pelabuhan Indonesia (Pelindo) II, the state-owned company assigned to manage the Tanjung Priok port, announced last year that, together with the Humpuss Group, it would set up a new container terminal capable of accommodating around 1.2 million containers of 20 feet with an investment of $495 million in North Jakarta.
The project, which requires an appropriation of 90 hectares of land currently inhabited by almost 40,000 people, should be realized by early next year.
Because no agreement on compensation has been reached, the land appropriation process is still not complete and no construction has been started.
In addition to obsolete container terminals, analysts have blamed Jakarta's complicated bureaucratic procedures in document clearing at the docks.
Analysts have also cited complicated government trucking regulations as having contributed to port congestion. (hdj)