Indonesia’s many ports need frequent dredging. However, Southeast Asia’s biggest economy faces challenges on this front.
Speaking at the Dredging & Land Reclamation Asia Summit in Singapore on 20 May, Indonesian port operator Pelindo IV director Kemal Heryandri said their main issue is the shortage of dredgers, especially trailer suction hopper dredgers (TSHD).
“The unit price of the government’s dredging budget is lower than that of privately funded projects,” said Kemal.
As a result, local dredging contractors would rather seek out projects outside of Indonesia. There are no shipyards in the country that build TSHDs.
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Kemal said, “There are initiatives from the private sector to finance and manage the access channel but still the government regulations about this are not clear.”
Indonesia has more than 2,000 ports and a 94,000 km long coastline. High amounts of alluvium and siltation require regular maintenance dredging.
Indonesian authorities estimate that 20 million m³ of materials would need to be dredged every year.
This post was sourced from IHS Maritime 360: View the original article here.