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View all search resultsLogistics is not expensive, it is misaligned
Indonesia is an archipelago where the sea is not a separator, but the primary connector. Yet, Indonesia’s logistics architecture tells a different story
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Freight trucks wait for their turn to board ferries at Bulusan Port in Banyuwangi, East Java, on July 25, 2025. (Antara/Budi Candra Setya)
T
here is a question that has lingered in Indonesia for decades. Why is logistics so expensive? It is a question that has shaped policy, justified massive investments and driven national debate.
It has led to more roads, more trucks, more tollways and more subsidies. It has been used to explain regional price disparities, to rationalize inefficiencies and to frame logistics as an unavoidable burden of geography.
And yet, despite all these efforts, the outcome remains unchanged. The system improves in parts, but never transforms as a whole.
At some point, we must begin to ponder whether we have been asking the wrong question all along.
Indonesia is an archipelago where the sea is not a separator, but the primary connector.
Yet, Indonesia’s logistics architecture tells a different story. It is designed as if the country were a continuous landmass. Goods are forced onto trucks for long distances. Supply chains stretch across congested corridors. Ports are treated as destinations rather than nodes. The system operates against its own geography. And that is where cost begins.
Japan, an island nation with high density and industrial complexity, did not build its logistics backbone on trucks alone. It developed coastal shipping corridors connecting its major industrial regions. Large volumes move by sea; trucks play a role, but not the dominant one. The result is not just efficiency in transport.
