Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi explained Monday the postponement was allowed by the 2008 Maritime Transport Service Law, which stipulates, among other things, that the cabotage policy shall be implemented three years after the law comes into force.

The issue here is not whether the deferment is legal, but simply the sad fact that five years after the promulgation of the presidential decree, national freighters are not yet ready to fully take over the shipment of domestic seaborne cargo.

This is only more evidence of how ignorant the government has been of basic infrastructure, notably coastal shipping services, which are vital for such a vast archipelagic country as Indonesia.

It is understandable if more than 80 percent of our exports and imports are still controlled by foreign vessels, in view of the keen competition in international freight service. But letting around 40 percent of our domestic seaborne cargo remain carried by foreign-flagged ships could inflict severe damage to our economy.

Inter-island shipping provides input to the national economy both through the transport of commodities used in manufacturing and through the distribution of finished goods. Put another way, efficient and extensive coastal shipping services deepen the economic integration and linkages between all the major islands.

We therefore find it hard to understand why the government has not made concerted efforts to empower the national shipping and shipbuilding industries through well-coordinated policies involving banks, shippers (manufacturers) and other related parties.

Cabotage relaxation could benefit the economy through wider access to lower freight rates, because international bulk ships usually have much larger capacities. Moreover, many bulk ships servicing Australia’s exports of coal, iron ore, wheat, alumina and sugar to South Korea, India and Japan and even Indonesia arrive in Australia empty. Hence these freighters can marginally cost their inbound capacity at rates national freighter companies cannot compete with.

But we should look beyond the short-term benefits. Heavy dependence on foreign vessels for our domestic cargo makes our economy vulnerable to a sudden disruption of supplies, because foreign bulk vessels select their service routes primarily on the basis of optimizing cargoes and returns. If the government is really serious about improving national economic competitiveness and making the archipelago an economically integrated zone, it has no other choice but to empower the shipping and shipbuilding industries in cooperation with banks, traders and manufacturing companies.

The implementation of the cabotage principle would go a long way in making shipping firms more attractive to bank lending as it would increase the cargo volume for national freighters, which in turn would require more cargo vessels.

The development of coastal freight services has become more imperative now due to the sharp increase in the demand for inter-island shipments of coal, palm oil, petroleum-based products and various other bulk commodities.

For instance, coal shipments alone will more than double into the hundreds of millions of tons within six to 10 years as a result of the building of new coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of 10,000 megawatts in Java, while coal supplies are derived mainly from Kalimantan and Sumatra.

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