Meeting With Minister Of Transportation Dudy, AHY Asks To Press Logistics Fees

Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development AHY (photo: between)

JAKARTA - The Coordinating Minister for Regional Infrastructure and Development, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono (AHY) visited the Ministry of Transportation's Office to meet with the Minister of Transportation Dudy Purwagandhi. Both discussed the reduction in logistics costs.

AHY said logistics costs are still a challenge for business actors today. In fact, he said the high cost of logistics has a major impact on the selling price of products at the consumer level.

"This 'cost of logistics' is also often a challenge, we don't want development costs to be a huge contribution, it's a huge burden on transportation, we have to reduce it," he said during a press conference, at the Ministry of Transportation, Jakarta, Wednesday, October 30.

According to AHY, logistics costs are indeed the main issue that hinders national economic growth. Therefore, he admitted that he wanted to reduce the percentage of logistics costs so that the economic benefits could be felt by the community more.

"So that the percentage between logistics costs or logistics transportation can be reduced better, so that the benefits or economic benefits can be felt by the community and the regions," he said.

Previously reported, Senior Economist Piter Abdullah said that the imbalance between supply and logistics demand was the cause of logistics costs in Indonesia. Currently, there is a supply imbalance and demand between Java and Outside Java.

Pieter said that the delivery of goods from Java is now cheap, but when they return from Outside Java, the price becomes expensive because the load is empty.

Thus, continued Pieter, no matter how good the logistics system was built for efficiency purposes, it still did not meet President Joko Widodo's initial goal (Jokowi) to reduce logistics costs.

"That's what causes our logistics to be expensive," he said at the BUMN Strengthening event Towards a Golden Indonesia entitled Smart Supply Chain: Digitalization of the Indonesian Logistics System, in Sarinah, Jakarta, Wednesday, October 2.

Pieter said that the sea highway that Jokowi continues to echo also has little impact on reducing logistics costs because there are problems with supply and demand imbalances.

On the other hand, Pieter acknowledged that the government of the era of President Jokowi was indeed quite successful in terms of infrastructure development and connectivity to support the national logistics sector.

However, continued Pieter, these two things have not been enough to reduce the cost of logistics in the country due to an imbalance between supply and demand.

Referring to data from the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, and the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) published by the Ministry of Transportation, logistics costs in Indonesia throughout 2023 were still at the level of 14.29 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

"Micro, both at PT Pos Indonesia, and PT Pelindo, including air logistics are in extraordinary reform. But what I mentioned earlier was that in the end our final goal was to reduce logistics costs that could improve competitiveness, encourage economic growth, and create prosperity, that's what hasn't happened yet," he said.