T

he Transportation Ministry'€™s airport director Bambang Tjahyono says that 38 investors have expressed an interest in managing and upgrading 10 non-commercial airports across the country.

Bambang said that of the 38 investors, 26 of them were foreign investors, consisting of 13 companies from Japan, three Singaporean firms, two Spanish companies, two from Australia and one each from South Korea, Malaysia and New Zealand.

'€œThose interested in participating in the tenders include airlines, consultants and financial institutions,'€ Bambang told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar entitled '€œWhat we need to do to support the rapid growth in air travel'€ on Thursday.

The government said earlier it would seek investors to develop and manage 10 airports: Fatmawati Soekarno Airport in Bengkulu; Hanandjoeddin Airport in Belitung; Radin Inten II Airport in Lampung; Tjilik Riwut Airport in Central Kalimantan; Juwata Airport in North Kalimantan; Komodo Airport in East Nusa Tenggara; Sultan Baabullah Airport in North Maluku; Mutiara Airport in Central Sulawesi; Matahora Airport in Southeast Sulawesi; and Sentani Airport in Papua.

Bambang previously said that national flag carrier PT Garuda Indonesia was the first company to submit a proposal to take over the management of one of the 10 non-commercial airports on offer from the Transportation Ministry.

He said that Garuda had submitted a written statement expressing its interest in managing Komodo Airport in Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara, due to its tourism potential.

According to Bambang, the ministry was offering private companies or other state-owned enterprises, besides state-run airport operators Angkasa Pura I and II, the opportunity to manage the airports, to help reduce the government'€™s dependency on the state airport operators.

The ministry'€™s air transportation directorate general allocated Rp 5.6 trillion (US$495 million) this year to build and maintain the 178 non-commercial airports under its management.

The state budget allocations from the fiscal years 2010-2014 for airports managed by the Transportation Ministry only amounted to Rp 19.5 trillion, while the cost of optimal development was
Rp 54 trillion.

Separately, Bastary Panji Indra, director of public-private partnership development at the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), said that the aviation sector in the country needed around $15.3 billion in investment for the next five years to improve the aviation sector'€™s competitiveness, including the building of Karawang International Airport in West Java in an attempt to support the country'€™s main gateway Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Based on the World Economic Forum'€™s Global Competitiveness Index, Indonesia'€™s airports ranked 68th out of 148 countries, below neighboring countries Malaysia and Thailand, which ranked 20th and 34th, respectively.

He said that the government expected to begin the construction of the airport, which would have a capacity of up to 70 million passenger a year, in 2015.

The annual number of passengers using Soekarno-Hatta in Banten, reached 60.13 million last year, nearly three times the airport'€™s designed capacity of 22 million passengers.

The new airport will be built on 900 hectares in Karawang, just east of Jakarta, and is expected to commence operations in 2019.