Positive Impact of Sea Highway

Even in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government is still making efforts to improve logistics performance, especially through sea transportation. The maritime highway program is even said to have succeeded in reducing food logistics costs.

Assistant Deputy for Monetary and External Sector of the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, Ferry Irawan, said that the sea toll program is a very efficient program as a means of distributing food to all regions in Indonesia. The logistics system is included in the scope of the National Logistics System (Sislognas) policy in the future.

"The sea highway is very effective because it routinely and scheduled reaches and distributes logistics to underdeveloped, remote, outermost and border areas (3TP)," said Ferry in a webinar of the Transportation Research and Development Agency (Balitbanghub) entitled Marine Transportation Strategies in Improving Logistics Performance at Pandemic period, recently.

Director of Sea Traffic and Transportation, Directorate General of Sea Transportation, Ministry of Transportation, Antoni Arif Priadi, revealed that the evaluation of sea tolls during the pandemic was quite positive. Antoni explained that some of the evaluations, including the marine toll program, had an impact on lowering the price level of staple goods with a variation of 3.1 percent.

"The sea highway program also has an impact on reducing the disparity in the price disparity of staple goods between western and eastern Indonesia with a variation of 14.1 percent," said Antoni.

In addition, sea tolls have also had a positive impact on reducing logistics costs in distributing staple goods. Logistics costs decreased by 5.5 percent from the national average.

Source: https://www.republika.co.id/berita/qotd73457/tol-laut-tangkas-biaya-logistik-pangan