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he Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) has hailed the commitment of the president-elect to improve sea transportation in order to solve the country'€™s notorious logistics distribution bottlenecks.

Kadin deputy chairman for regional empowerment, Natsir Mansyur, said Wednesday that the sea highway program unveiled by president-elect Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo during his recent campaign was quite realistic in terms of supporting economic growth in the eastern part of the country.

However, he said the initiative should be carried out in line with the current government'€™s logistics blueprint for 2010-2025 that has designated Kuala Tanjung Port in North Sumatra and Bitung in North Sulawesi as the country'€™s international hub ports for the eastern and western parts of the country, respectively.

State-owned port operator Pelindo II'€™s program to connect six main ports '€” Belawan in North Sumatra; Batam in Riau Islands; Tanjung Priok in Jakarta; Tanjung Perak in East Java; Makassar in South Sulawesi; and Sorong in West Papua '€” named Pendulum Nusantara, should also be put into consideration, Natsir said.

'€œIt is very important to start shifting our dependency on land transportation to sea transportation. However, the incoming government and all the stakeholders should first reach a common understanding regarding the sea highway initiative,'€ Natsir said in a discussion on Wednesday. '€œWill all the logistics plans be connected to each other or not? It should be clearly explained,'€ he continued.

The primary goal of the sea highway initiative, aimed at connecting five major cities '€” Medan in North Sumatra, Jakarta, Surabaya in East Java, Makassar in South Sulawesi and Sorong in West Papua '€” is to boost connectivity in Southeast Asia'€™s largest economy and to reduce the country'€™s high logistical costs that have hurt the competitiveness of local products compared to imported goods.

Jokowi'€™s economic team has previously said that within the next five years, a total of 10 commercial seaports were slated to be built or revitalized. Among the seaports, according to the economic team, are Belawan in North Sumatra, Kalibaru in North Jakarta, Bitung in North Sulawesi and Sorong in West Papua.

Senator Nur Bahagia, head of the Sislognas team of expertsfrom the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister, said; '€œwe will supportthe sea highway initiative as long as it will carry on the Sislognas program'€.

'€œSislognas has designated Kuala Tanjung and Bitung as international hubs as a '€˜barrier to entry'€™ in the upcoming free market where we will see a free flow of goods,'€ Senator said. '€œWe will support the sea highway initiative as long as it will carry on the Sislognas program,'€ he said.

Senator said that the country'€™s current logistics cost was 26 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), among the highest of any Southeast Asian country, and that the government has set a target to reduce it to 19 percent within the next five years under the logistics blueprint.