Lamtoro Gung's subsidiary to build container terminal

JAKARTA (JP): PT Pelindo III, a state-owned port management company, together with PT Citra Samudera Terminal Peti Kemas (CSTP) under a joint venture, is to build a Rp 270 billion (US$114.4 million) container terminal at Surabaya's Tanjung Perak port.

Soedjarwo Soerjanto, a director of the state-owned port management firm, said in Surabaya, East Java, Friday that the container terminal, which will be the third in the port, will be the first terminal at the port to be built under a joint operation with a private sector company.

"The profit sharing of the joint operation will be based on the ratio of the two companies investments in the terminal project," he said.

He said that Pelindo III, which also controls 31 other ports in eastern Indonesia, will share around Rp 100 billion of the planned investment for the terminal.

CSTP, a subsidiary of PT Citra Lamtoro Gung Persada which is owned by President Soeharto's eldest daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, will provide the remaining Rp 170 billion.

The investment to be provided by Pelindo III will be used to finance the construction of a 500-meter-long pier at the planned container terminal, he said.

The construction of the first 250 meters of the pier is scheduled for completion in 1997 and the other 250 meter is to be completed in 1998, Soedjarwo said.

CSTP's investment, according to the contract agreement signed by the two companies recently, will be used to finance the procurement of loading and unloading facilities and to build the terminal's receiving area.

Soedjarwo said that the construction of the terminal is necessary to minimize the backlog of container flow at Tanjung Perak, the country's second largest port after Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port.

He said Pelindo III has for several years operated two container terminals to facilitate container traffic at Tanjung Perak port. "But their handling capacities are no longer adequate in meeting the increase in the container traffic," he said.

He said that the container traffic passing through the two existing terminals already reaches 500,000 twenty-feet equivalent units (TEUs) annually at present.

"The actual traffic is much larger than estimated," he said, referring to the port's 1988 estimate that states the container traffic was likely to reach 500,000 TEUs per annum in 1998.

He said that the growth of the container traffic at Tanjung Perak port reached an average of 27 percent per annum in the last three years, far higher than the earlier estimate of 15 percent.

Soedjarwo said that the planned terminal will double the port's goods handling capacity to one million TEUs per year.

Pelindo III booked operational revenues of Rp 112 billion in the first semester of this year, more than half of the Rp 212 billion projected for the whole year.

The company's gross profit totaled Rp 50 billion in the January-June period, also more than half of its Rp 90 billion target for the whole year. (hen)