VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesia has been whitelisted for ship worthiness and safety by the Port State Control (PSC) Committee of the Memorandum of Understanding on PSC in the Asia-Pacific Region (Tokyo MOU).

The whitelist has been published in the organization’s annual report, which contains data on port control activities throughout the 21 permanent member countries of the Tokyo MOU in 2021.

Indonesia has so far made it to the whitelist twice—in 2020 and 2021, expert staff for maritime law at the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment, Okto Irianto, informed in a statement issued here on Thursday. Meanwhile, the country was put on the grey list in 2019.

For more than two decades, Indonesian-flagged vessels were often assessed to be not safe for sailing, thus, many of them were detained, he noted.

The inclusion of Indonesia for the second year in a row in the whitelist shows the increasing confidence of the global community regarding the safety of Indonesian-flagged vessels, he stated.

Hence, Irianto -- who is also the head of the Indonesian-flagged Vessel Working Group -- said he expected the whitelist status to improve the competitiveness of Indonesian ships in conducting export and import activities.

"The status certainly gives a positive impact to our logistics cost. We hope more import-export actors will use Indonesian-flagged ships, which are cheap and safe," he remarked.

According to the 2021 Tokyo MOU report, only 22 Indonesian-flagged vessels were detained out of the 589 ships inspected over the past three years.

The number of vessels detained has also gradually declined every year.

In 2019, only 11 vessels were detained, while the number fell to 6 and 5 ships in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

The Tokyo MOU’s annual report also showed that the performance of state-run Indonesian-flagged commercial vessels classification provider PT Biro Klasifikasi Indonesia (BKI) has increased from a medium to a high level.

PT BKI’s increasing performance level must be maintained in collaboration with various related parties, the coordinating ministry’s expert staff said.

In addition, he asked that periodic monitoring of the vessels be carried out in accordance with the Tokyo MOU’s standards.  (Antaranews)