W

ith increasing inefficiency at Tanjung Priok, the country'€™s main port, Cikarang Dry Port in West Java remains under utilized by both exporters and importers.

The privately controlled dry port recorded 9,869 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of volume realization during the first half this year, well below its total capacity of 400,000 TEUs.

Containers can access the dry port by road, which is located around 65 kilometers from Tanjung Priok Port in North Jakarta. The port has an integrated port service system, including customs, clearances and quarantine, according to Cikarang Dry Port managing director Benny Woenardi.

'€œA [recent] survey from the World Bank stated that total costs for imported goods [using the dry port] were 50 percent lower than [those using the Tanjung Priok Port],'€ he told journalists invited to the site, adding that the time needed to process goods at the dry port also was 50 percent faster than at Tanjung Priok.

The 200-hectare dry port '€” operated by PT Cikarang Inland Port, a subsidiary of publicly listed PT Jababeka '€” is near several industrial areas like Bekasi and Karawang. Jababeka also owns an industrial area of around 2,500 factories in Cikarang.

According to Benny, Cikarang Dry Port is targeting a utilization level of 30,000 TEUs for 2013 and expects to get a total of 100 customers by the end of this year, from 19 customers last year.

'€œWe already have 70 customers,'€ said Benny, adding some of the new customers were from the automotive, electronics and fast moving consumer goods sectors.

Among those using the dry port'€™s services are consumer goods producer Unilever, food producer Kraft, motorcycle maker Yamaha and milk producer Ultrajaya.

Benny said Jababeka also cooperated with state logistics firm PT Kereta Api Logistik to get goods delivered from Cikarang to Surabaya, East Java.

The dry port operator also cooperates with Iron Bird for transportation of goods from the dry port to
Tanjung Priok and from the dry port to factories.

Businesspeople have been blaming Pelindo II, state operator of Tanjung Priok Port, and the government for '€œlengthy'€ dwelling time and '€œhigh'€ yard occupancy ratio '€” both are port efficiency measurements '€” at the port.

The dwelling time at Tanjung Priok Port has continued to increase '€” for example from six-and-a-half days last year to eight days this year '€” in line with its economy that has annually expanded to more than 6 percent since 2010 despite President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s order to stakeholders to reduce the dwelling time at the port to three days.

The dwelling time begins from the time a carrier moors at a port to the time its cargo is unloaded and the cargo leaves the port, or vice versa.

The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said Tanjung Priok Port'€™s yard occupancy ratio (YOR) had shot up to over 100 percent. The lower the YOR, the less space containers take up at port, thus, the faster the containers move.

Kadin Jakarta deputy head Sjafrizal BK earlier said businessmen could lose up to Rp 4.8 billion (US$480,000) per day due to the inefficiency at the port.

Indonesia'€™s logistics performance is one of the poorest among Southeast Asian countries, ranked 59th out of 155 developing and high-income economies included in the World Bank'€™s 2012 logistics performance index, far behind the Philippines and Vietnam.

According to the Indonesia Logistics and Forwarder Association (ILFA), Indonesia sits at the bottom with an average of 8.7 days dwelling time, compared to Thailand with five days and Singapore with 1.2 days.