The Ministry Of Trade Calls Maritime Outlets Contributing To Lowering Goods Prices In One Decade

Food prices (photo: dock. Antara)

The Ministry of Trade (Kemendag) said the Maritime Outlets program played an important role in reducing the prices of basic goods (bapok), essential goods, and other goods. As well as strengthening national logistics connectivity.

The Director General of Domestic Trade at the Ministry of Trade, Moga Simatupang, said that Maritime Outlets also play a vital role in reducing prices for goods outside Java in the last decade for the 2015 to 2024 period.

Maritime outlets that take advantage of the existence of sea highways and air bridges are able to lower the price of goods better than commercial routes. Seeing this, Maritime Outlets have become an important aspect in strengthening national logistics," he said in an official statement, Wednesday, October 9.

Moga said the effectiveness of Maritime Outlets can be seen from the disparity movement and stability of bapok prices in the last ten years. He explained that the disparity in bapok prices and price stability is increasingly showing good results.

Based on the official report in charge of trade in the regions compiled in the Maritime Outlet Information System (SIGM), continued Moga, price disparities are decreasing and prices are increasingly maintained stable.

Moga explained that in general there was a decrease in the value of the coefficients of interim and inter-regional bapok prices during the 2015 to 2024 period. He said this shows a decline in price disparities between regions and an increase in price stability.

However, he continued, there was an increase in disparities in 2022 and 2023 due to the post-COVID-19 commodity supercycle phenomenon, this condition improved again in 2024.

Over the past ten years, the trend of inter-regional variable coefficients has shown an improving price disparity. This is indicated from the number of inter-regional variation coefficients which continued to fall from 14.02 in 2015 to 10.15 in the second quarter of 2024," he said.

Meanwhile, Moga said the trend of interim variable coefficients over the past ten years showed that the stability of bapok prices was getting better, indicated from the interim variable coefficient rate which continued to decline from 6.3 in 2015 to 3.23 in the second quarter of 2024.

According to Moga, this performance is also supported by the growth in the number of sea toll routes, as well as the development of the air bridge from year to year.

In 2015, the sea highway was launched with six routes. Now, in 2024, the sea highway is recorded to have 39 routes spread to West, Central and East Indonesia," explained Moga.

Based on data for the period 2022 to 2024, the prices of bapok, essential goods, and other goods in cities traversed by sea toll routes show a consistent and significant downward trend.

"Regions with an average percentage reduction in the highest price for bapok are the Tanimbar Islands Regency with a price reduction of 23.30 percent," he said.

For your information, Maritime Outlets are the Ministry of Trade's program which aims to facilitate the distribution of basic goods and essential goods to remote, outermost, and border areas.

This program is one of the efforts of the Ministry of Trade to maintain the availability of goods, reduce price fluctuations between times, minimize price disparities between regions, and increase the smooth flow of goods.

The use of sea highways and air bridges is carried out through coordination of ministries and institutions such as the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Transportation, and local governments that are part of the crossing route.