The 2-year-old sea toll program has not significantly reduced the price gap, particularly in the eastern regions of Indonesia.
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Kompas/Fransiskus Pati Herin
Goods transported on so called sea-toll vessels are carried by motorboat from Saumlaki City to Selaru Island in West Maluku Tenggara regency, Maluku, on Sunday (28/1). While the vessels were hoped to bring down logistical costs, the prices of goods remain high.
MAKASSAR, KOMPAS — The 2-year-old sea toll program has not significantly reduced the price gap, particularly in the eastern regions of Indonesia. In a number of areas targeted for the sea toll, prices are still high for basic and essential commodities. This has been due in part to the sea tollgates’ lack of control over the distribution of goods and irregular shipping schedules.
The government launched the sea toll road program in November 2015. The program involves the regular, scheduled and subsidized transportation of goods from Java Island to disadvantaged, remote and borderland areas. The program is expected to guarantee the supply of goods and minimize the price gap.
As of 2017, there were 13 sea toll routes with 41 seaports, the majority of which are located in the eastern part of the country, especially regions that experience wide price disparities with Java. This year, the program targets covering 15 sea toll routes with 58 ports of call.
Container ships are subsidized, with the Transportation Ministry saying that the subsidy amounted to nearly 50 percent of commercial tariffs on private vessels. In 2016, the sea toll subsidy budget was Rp 218.9 billion, with the figure increasing to Rp 355 billion in 2017 and a projected Rp 447.6 billion in 2018.
Monitoring a number of areas over two weeks, it appeared the prices of basic commodities remained unchanged, and some rising prices were even recorded. The monitoring covered Manokwari (West Papua), Saumlaki (Southeast Maluku, Maluku), Wanci (Wakatobi, Southeast Sulawesi), and Tahuna (Sangihe Islands, North Sulawesi), as well as Mentawai (West Sumatera) and other ports of call in western Indonesia.
In Sanggeng Market, Manokwari, rice cost Rp 15,000 per kilogram, sugar Rp 19,000 per kg, cooking oil Rp 18,000 per liter, beef Rp 120,000 per kg, and chicken Rp 45,000 per kg. Meanwhile, cement cost Rp 80,000-Rp 90,000 per sack.
Yaman Yunus, a trader at Sanggeng Market, said he was forced to sell basic commodities at higher prices because he obtained them at high prices from distributors.
In Saumlaki Market, the price of premium-quality rice was Rp 15,000 per kg, while medium-quality rice cost Rp 11,300 per kg. Cement cost Rp 75,000 per sack. Local residents said the prices were no difference from previous years.
The head of West Southeast Maluku regency’s Industry, Trade and Manpower Office, Mesak Rahandekut, was aware of the situation. According to him, a number of commodities saw an increasing trend in their prices. He expressed concern over the absence of commodity price regulations in Saumlaki in connection with the sea toll road operation.
At Wakatobi Central Market, traders said that prices were also unchanged. Cooking oil sold for Rp 9,000 per 600-milliliter bottle and sugar cost Rp 590,000 for each 50 kg sack. However, based on the Wakatobi Industry and Trade Office’s December 2017 data, the prices of commodities sold by traders utilizing the sea tolls reportedly declined. The decrease in prices ranged from 1 percent to 35 percent.
The Wakatobi Industry and Trade Office’s Trade Development head, Puspawati, suspected that consumers did not enjoy lower prices because retailers still sold commodities at the same prices.
Shipping problems
In Mentawai, vessels traveled the sea toll road only seven times since March 2017. The ships have not arrived there since August, whereas the Tarex-2 vessels were scheduled to arrive twice a month on the route. "I don\'t know why. But from the information I have received, the boat prefers to serve a different route to transport cement to Nias," said Mentawai Transportation Office head Edi Sukarni.
According to Edi, the situation made it impossible to measure the sea toll’s impact on Mentawai. The vessels headed to Mentawai directly supplied building materials. Now, the building materials are first being transported overland to Padang, West Sumatra, where they are loaded on ships to Mentawai.
The same thing has happened in Tahuna. Sangihe Island Regent Jabes Gaghana said that since the sea tolls to his region were launched in May 2016, the shipping schedule has been irregular. In 2017, no ships arrived in Tahuna for five months. The last ship to make port was in December 2017.
As a result, commodity supplies and prices are unstable. This is increasingly felt in Tatoareng, Marore and Nusa Tabukan of the Sangihe Islands, located far from Tahuna. Jabes expressed hoped that the sea toll vessels would follow the shipping schedule regularly and that the program’s coverage could be expanded to nearby islands with a feeder fleet. "No significant impact from the sea toll has been felt by the islands’ residents," he said.
Domestic Sea Transportation sub-directorate head Wisnu Handoko, of the Transportation Ministry’s Sea Transportation directorate general, said that commodity prices at the sea toll’s ports of call could be lowered by 15-20 percent. However, in areas located farther from the seaport, the decline in prices was minimal. "The subsidies for commodity distribution by sea only help coastal residents, with ocean freight subsidized by a maximum 30 percent of total logistics costs. Therefore, in areas far from ports, prices only decline by 3-5 percent," Wisnu said.
He said that the Transportation Ministry would continue improving the sea toll program and monitor the distribution of goods to destination ports. The utilization of subsidies, shippers and cargo recipients were supervised to prevent the goods from being sold at high prices, or even monopolized by irresponsible parties.
