Erick Thohir: Makassar New Port Becomes The Largest Hub Port In Eastern Indonesia

Inauguration of Makassar New Port (Photo: Ministry of SOEs)

JAKARTA National Strategic Project, Makassar New Port (MNP) has been inaugurated by President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) today. This port is the largest hub port in Eastern Indonesia and is also expected to support economic growth there.

The inauguration of the National Strategic Project, Makassar New Port (MNP) was marked by moving container mockups to ship mockups and signing inscriptions.

The Minister of SOEs, Erick Thohir said, according to President Jokowi's directive three years ago, that the strength of the SOE port must be unified to become a global player, increase efficiency, and encourage a reduction in national logistics costs.

Therefore, continued Erick, starting with the consolidation of Pelindo I, II, III, and IV becoming Pelindo, ports in Indonesia are now one of the best ports with the top 20 in the world from all ports in Southeast Asia.

"We have pressed today, for example, loading and unloading, which was 34 boxes, has become 20 boxes, which was said to take days with an average of 38 hours now to 22 hours, meaning this is an extraordinary acceleration. We also continue to organize 122 ports in Indonesia through monitoring port systems in Eastern Indonesia that are integrated with Jakarta," said Erick, Thursday, February 22.

The Ministry of SOEs, continued Erick, is collaborating with the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of PUPR to present three international ports by integrating surrounding infrastructure and integrating several industrial areas to become part of the port ecosystem.

Therefore, Erick said that the presence of Makassar New Port is very important where it is a world gate or hub for the Eastern Indonesia Region.

"We continue to consolidate in terms of finance, thank God, the profit is IDR 3.9 trillion and this National Strategic Project investment is independent from Pelindo itself worth IDR 5.4 trillion and continues to gradually reach IDR 10 trillion," said Erick.

For your information, the inaugurated MNP Phase 1A, 1B and 1C piers have a total length of 1,280 meters and built PT Pelabuhan Indonesia (Persero) on an area of 52 hectares to support economic growth in eastern Indonesia.

The presence of a new port in Makassar will be able to accommodate a total of 2.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) containers for the 1A, B, and C stage piers as well as a breath of fresh air for shipping lines or shipping companies.

Because with the depth it has, namely -16 meters of LWS (Low Water Springs), the MNP dock can be driven by ships with large weight or post panamax which is usually used for direct calls or direct shipping abroad.

MNP has also been equipped with Integrated Planning and Control Room, an innovative step to monitor and control ship services, terminals, containers, and logistics centrally. This transformation aims to improve service efficiency and support national logistics competitiveness.

Where the Integrated Planning and Control Room became the evolution of the previous Planning and Control Room (PnC) which was successfully implemented in Semarang. This difference lies in its surveillance coverage which is not only limited in Makassar, but also includes other areas such as Kendari, Balikpapan, to Maluku and Papua.

Since the stage 1A pier was inaugurated in operation around early November 2018, the presence of MNP has been able to unravel the waiting time or waiting time of the ship at the port for loading and unloading goods that have long been operating in the Makassar area, namely the Makassar Container Terminal (TPM) or what is now known as MNP.

With services 24 per 7 or 24 hours for 7 days, the presence of MNP which will later be integrated with a large-scale industrial area as well as railroads and toll roads connecting cities in Sulawesi is expected to be able to boost Indonesia's economic growth widely.