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2019 will see nine new toll roads, but that's still not enough to cut logistics costs
The President has announced that nine new toll roads to be inaugurated this year will reduce logistics costs, but experts say that hard infrastructure is only part of the solution.
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The brightly painted East Probolinggo tollgate stands on the Pasuruan-Probolinggo toll road in East Java. Nine new toll roads are to open later this year, but challenges remain in reducing Indonesia's high logistics costs. (The Jakarta Post/Seto Wardhana)
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ine new toll roads in Java, South Sumatra, North Sulawesi and East Kalimantan with a combined length of about 400 kilometers will be inaugurated later this year, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo told his Instagram followers in a message posted last Wednesday.
“The toll roads' existence will boost interregional connectivity and improve logistics costs [and] efficiency,” the President said in his Instagram post.
The new toll roads, part of the 1,852 km span of toll roads targeted for development in 2015-2019, and include the 5.5 km Cinere-Jagorawi (Cijago) toll road from Kebun Raya Bogor to Kukusan in Depok, the 36.4 km Jakarta-Cikampek II South toll road. The 189 km Terbanggi Besar-Kayu Agung section and the 33.5 km Kayu Agung-Palembang-Betung Section 1, both part of the Bakauheni-Palembang toll road connecting (South Lampung and South Sumatra, are also planned for inauguration.
Also opening later this year are the 22.5 km Manado-Bitung toll road in North Sulawesi and sections 2-4 spanning 66.4 km of the Balikpapan-Samarinda (Balsam) toll road in East Kalimantan.
The new toll roads are certain to improve connectivity between cities and provinces. As to whether they will reduce logistics costs for the country’s commodities and industrial goods, Indonesian Trucking Association (Aptrindo) deputy chair Kyatmaja Lookman has replied, “not much”.
Kyatmaja acknowledged that while the new toll roads could improve traffic distribution and traffic efficiency, developing toll roads alone was not enough to reduce logistics costs. Such an outcome would require additional development in other parts of the logistics chain, such as warehousing and cargo loading and unloading.
“The government, for example, should direct the construction of warehouses near toll roads,” Kyatmaja told The Jakarta Post on Aug. 12.
