The government has shown its Japanese counterpart that it means business on the Patimban project, finally including the deep-sea port project in Subang, West Java, on its national strategic projects list.

The decision was made official with the issuance of Presidential Regulation No. 47/2016, signed on May 25. The project adds to other national strategic projects, already numbering 225.

Inclusion of Patimban as a strategic project was a follow-up from a meeting between President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when the two met during a G7 Summit in Ise-Shima, Japan, last month.

Japan had previously asked for the regulation to be issued as a guarantee, the Transportation Ministry stated.

“[The new status] means that this project now has to be built. The process should also be faster now,” the ministry’s port and dredging director Mauritz Sibarani wrote in a text message on Monday.

Now that Patimban has been deemed a national strategic project, all ministries and agencies are obliged to facilitate and expedite all processes related to it, from planning, development and technical aspects to management of the port.

The privileged status will also open the door to easier access to an Environmental Impact Analysis (Amdal), which often forms a stumbling block for projects, and more power to request adjustments to Subang’s provincial spatial planning (RTRW).

The government’s commitment remains exclusively with Japan so far, Sibarani said. Japan expressed its interest in funding the project in an official letter sent to the ministry in March.

Total project costs are estimated at US$3.09 billion. Japan has agreed to provide $2.21 billion in funds to finance the construction under a soft loan scheme.

The scheme, called the Special Terms for Economic Partnership (STEP), will offer a 0.1 percent interest rate and will mature after 40 years, including a 10-year grace period.

Meanwhile, as much as $595 million from the total cost will be financed by the state budget for land procurement and road construction around the port, and the remaining $285 million will come from the Transportation Ministry and the port’s future operator.

As reported before, the deep-sea port aims to support the flow of goods to and from industrial estates in regencies east of Jakarta, such as Bekasi and Karawang – home to Japan’s automotive, electronics, machinery and component manufacturers.

Once completed, the port will have an initial container capacity of 250,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) and will be expanded to a 7.5 million-TEU capacity by 2037, or half the capacity of Jakarta’s Tanjung Priok Port, the country’s largest port and a hub for more than 50 percent of the goods shipped in and out of Indonesia.

The Transportation Ministry and the port’s operator — to be determined in an ongoing tender process — will be the ones operating the Patimban Port.

Antonius Tonny Budiono, the ministry’s newly appointed director general for sea transportation, stated the government would also form a special team for the Patimban project to accelerate work.

It will be an integrated team comprising several institutions, including the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry and the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister.

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