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Indonesia to open four new short sea ports by January

Indonesia to open four new short sea ports by January
Indonesia's transportation ministry announced that four new short sea shipping ports would open no later than January 2015, adding that the Indonesian government would seek to create incentives in order to reduce shipping costs, local reports said.

Short sea shipping, key to president Joko Widodo's maritime highway plan is common in Europe and other more developed markets, but is sorely underdeveloped in Indonesia, a country which ironically vitally needs it due to the its archipelagic geography.

“We already have the ports so there’s no need to build a new one,” said Bobby Mamahit, the transport ministry's director general for sea transportation.

The four ports are at Panjang in Lampung, Marunda in Jakarta, Kendal in Central Java and Paciran in East Java.

“[Short sea] vessels don’t require docks longer than 150 meters. but we’ve prepared docks that are 200 meters long,” Bobby said.

In addition to emphasizing that the infrastructure would be ready to handle the allocated volume of shipping, Bobby said that the government was continuing to look at driving down costs for shipping firms.

“We can provide incentives. Reducing costs at the ports, for instance,” Bobby said. “The government must support new programmes like this so that there won’t be any hurdles and they can be realized immediately.”