Generating Awareness as Islands Country of Indonesia (part 1)

author: Satriyo Panalaran (panalaran@gmail.com)


Indonesia is maritime country which has big opportunity to utilize marine resource and marine services (including shipping and port services) sector. Indonesia is an islands country which has 5.8 million kilometer square areas of sea (or 2/3 of whole areas of this country). Indonesia has 13,466 of island (refer to “Badan Informasi Geospasial” data). Indonesia is country with the second longest coastline among others country. Coastal shore is an area which has high fishery productivity. It is because in this zone grow up ecosystem of coral reef; sea grass and mangrove. In general, all of this ecosystem has roles as nursery ground; breeding ground; and feeding ground of fish. Indonesia is also surrounded by two ocean (here is west Pacific Ocean and India Ocean) so it makes Indonesia supplied with fish because it is passed by path of tuna migration from Northern to Southern or otherwise. Important roles of coastal shore is caused in this zone relative calm from wave effect and has content of various mineral so the waters supports ecosystem to grow. Hence, the statement of Indonesia is second longest coastline can be descript the big potency of fisheries productivity.

Marine resources potency is not only coming from the capture fisheries, marine waters is also can be developed for aquaculture such as seaweed, clam, lobster, milkfish, etc. Aquaculture is also not small business sector, Indonesia has opportunity to become leading country from this sector. In fact, we have not become major exporter of aquaculture products. The superiority of aquaculture sector is businessman relative has certainty of production, in other hand, businessman are not dependent stock of fish which the longer it will decrease. As has been said before, the potential of marine sector is just not about production of fish, but also includes fish processing industry, marine tourism, renewable energy, marine biopharmaceutical, shipping logistic, port, offshore drilling, seabed minerals and other maritime services.

Today it can be said that Indonesia has not been able to utilize the whole of potency from marine sector. It can be seen from some evidence of which the absence of Indonesia as the main exporter of fishery products (even Indonesia just ranked fifth among countries of Southeast Asia), Indonesia still imports salts, business in fish processing is still small of counts, diversification of energy from energy of tidal current and waves has not been successful, shipping services are still widely supported foreign vessels, inefficiency of permitting and lack of facilities of port that causes logistics costs more expensive. Estimated potency of all marine sector can achieve US$ 1.2 trillion (or more than six times APBN of 2015). Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that Indonesia can become economically developed country if we can identify the challenges to manage an islands country.