Difficult to cut dwelling time in Boom Baru Port

Palembang (ANTARA Sumsel) - PT Pelabuhan Indonesia II said it is difficult to cut dwelling time in the port of Boom Baru, Palembang, this year on an increase in the volume of cargoes to follow the brisk infrastructure development in the city.

General Manager of Pelindo II of the Palembang branch Agus Hendrianto said here on Sunday, the flow of goods grew 30 percent via the port, while there is limited infrastructure, therefore, it is difficult to meet the dwelling time target of 2.5-3 hours as expected by President Joko Widodo.

"The quay of the port is only 750 meters long that it could accommodate only three 250 meter long ships to dock. In addition, loading an unloading equipment is also not sufficiently available," Hendrianto said.

Worse still is that Pelindo II is repairing some of the port infrastructure. The repair work took space limiting room for port activities.

"The ratio of used space to total port space is already higher than 50 percent or close to 60 percent , a level considered maximum," he said.

Despite the difficulty the company managed to post Rp31 billion in operating profit exceeding its target by 5 percent in the first half of 2017.

He said there has been a lot of jobs to be carried out as the main target to be reached by the government is to develop connectivity between Sabang and Marauke.

"He said the vast territory of Indonesia is a tremendous potential , at the same time a big challenge to develop the transport facilities," he said.

The government has launched a special strategy to build connectivity between regions with plan to build 65 ports, urban railways and rolling highways, non commercial ports , sea toll roads and 15 new airports.

With these targets the country`s economy is expected to grow more than 6 percent, but in the first half of 2017, the country`s economy grew only 5.01 percent.