The ministry’s director for East Asia and Pacific affairs, Santo Darmosumarto, and Japanese Ambassador to Indonesia Masafumi Ishii signed an exchange of notes marking the handover of the fisheries patrol vessel in Jakarta on Friday.

The 63.37 meter long, 741 gross ton Japanese ship was manufactured in 1993 and has a maximum carrying capacity of 29 people. It will be handed over to Jakarta after it is decommissioned by Tokyo next month, the first of its kind under a Japanese grant.

“It has been handed over in principle, but the delivery is expected by the end of this year,” Santo told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

Indonesia has made use of decommissioned technology from other countries to make the most of its state budget constraints, having previously acquired old but functional Japanese train cars for the commuter railway in Jakarta.

The new grant is part of a larger cooperation agreement struck with the Japanese to develop tourism, fisheries and energy infrastructure in Indonesia’s outermost islands facing the South China Sea, which was consummated in 2017 following skirmishes between Indonesia and China in the North Natuna Sea the previous year.

“Indonesia suffers losses due to illegal fishing but the Indonesian Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry has no vessel capable of patrolling [the country’s] sea,” the Japanese Embassy’s economic counsellor Shimizu Kazuhiko said in a statement.

“After March 2020, we will provide training on the repair, use and sailing of the vessel. The vessel will be handed over to the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry in 2021,” Kazuhiko added.

The cooperation was signed by then maritime and fisheries minister Susi Pudjiastuti and Hiroto Izumi, special adviser to the Japanese prime minister, who also agreed that one of the Natuna islands would be among six outermost islands to get coastal radars.

It would also include the development of an integrated maritime affairs and fisheries center (SKPT) on the Natuna Islands.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo told Japan’s Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi he wanted to intensify collaboration in the SKPT development in Natuna after repeated run-ins with the Chinese coast guard in Indonesia’s exclusive waters at the beginning of the year.

Motegi responded not only with a commitment to help develop Natuna, but also to empower Indonesia’s Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla), which was only recently instructed to spearhead Indonesia’s “white hull diplomacy” in the Natunas, as opposed to using the military grey hulls of the Indonesian Navy.

Before the onset of the current coronavirus outbreak, Indonesia and China were involved in tense maritime skirmishes in the first weeks of January, after it emerged that Chinese fishing boats and coast guard ships had been going in and out of the North Natuna Sea to fish illegally. China maintains it has used the fishing grounds in Indonesian waters as part of a tradition that is not recognized by international law.

Jokowi personally visited Natuna regency in Riau Islands province to assert Indonesia’s sovereign rights over natural resources in its exclusive economic zones (EEZ), just as China softened its tone and recalled most of its vessels from the EEZ.

As a geopolitical counterbalance to China’s influence, the Japanese government has pushed for initiatives like the grant as part of its “free and open” Indo-Pacific concept, which emphasizes Indonesia’s strategic location at the center of a region straddling the Indian and Pacific oceans as “crucially important” for Japan’s strategy. (tjs)

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