President Jokowi Inaugurates Tanjung Priok Toll Road
President Jokowi accompanied by Transportation Minister and Public Works and Public Housing Minister reviews Tanjung Priok Toll Road in Jakarta, Saturday (15/4). (Photo: PR/Jay)
After a delay for several years in its construction, President Joko Jokowi Widodo inaugurated the Tanjung Priok Access Toll Road, on Saturday (15/4) afternoon. The 11.4 kilometer toll road is expected to provide excellent competitiveness on the speed of service of goods from and to the Port of Tanjung Priok.
President Jokowi in his speech said that Tanjung Priok Port is a major port, considering before all the items are distributed to other ports across Indonesia, they are collected in this port. If this port operates not smooth and fast, everything will be slow. “Therefore, once again, alhamdulillah this afternoon toll road access to Tanjung Priok can be operated soon. So the speed of the container to get into the boat and to get out of Tanjung Priok can really be served well,” said the President as he also expressed his hope that the Tanjung Priok Access Toll Road can actually be used in the framework of competitiveness of Indonesian products.
According to the President, a large ship of 10,000 TEUs will also dock at Tanjung Priok next week. He mentioned that this is the first large ship docking at the Tanjung Priok, and the Government will use this for lowering logistics costs and accelerating the delivery of goods or the arrival of goods to and from Indonesia.
With the arrival of the ship later on, the President added, the goods from here will quickly get into the ship and the goods from the ship will quickly get out of Tanjung Priok. We expect that in the future, all containers should not have to conduct transhipment in Singapore, everything can be directly distributed to the destination ports because large ships can now dock at the port. “I think this has been for decades we want to have this kind of port. And next Sunday, in shaa Allah, there will be a large ship of 10,000 TEUs that will be docking at the Tanjung Priok,” President Jokowi said.
President Jokowi mentioned that this is the beginning of the competitiveness of Indonesian products because indeed the shipcost would be far cheaper thanks to the better service of vessels which are present at Tanjung Priok port.
Constraints on Land Acquisition
Earlier when starting his speech, President Jokowi said that he remembered once when he was Governor, he encountered problems regarding land acquisition. “I remember once, the last time is the acquisition issues on the corner. So it took almost 2.5 years to make the project delayed,” the President said.
President Jokowi revealed that after visiting the field several times, land acquisition problems can be resolved. Then the problems regarding the structure improvement, in which previously there were 69 poles that have to be replaced with more appropriate specifications. “So we can resume the project, perhaps it will take approximately 5-6 years,” the President explained.
He said that Tanjung Priok Access Toll Road will be used by approximately 3,600 container trucks every day. A figure that the President deemed is very big.
Therefore, President Jokowi believes this will provide excellent competitiveness on the speed of service of goods from and to the Port of Tanjung Priok.
The inauguration ceremony of Tanjung Priok Access Toll Road was also attended by Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi, Minister of Public Works and Public Housing Basuki Hadimuljono, Presidential Chief of Staff Teten Masduki, Japanese Ambassador to Indonesia Ishii Masafumi, Acting Governor of Jakarta Sumarsono, Commissioners and Directors of Indonesian state-owned port operator PT Pelindo II, PT Jakarta International Container Terminal, and Indonesian state-owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina. (RMI/ES) (MUR/YM/Naster).
