Shipyards Not Yet Strong Enough To Support Maritime State

Surabaya, E Java, Sept 11 (Antara) - Deputy Minister for Industry Alex Retraubun said the country`s shipbuilding industry is not strong enough to support a maritime county. "The country`s shipbuilding industry has expanded but the advancement is still far from being ideal to support Indonesia as a maritime country," Alex said here on Wednesday. He said his evaluation is based mainly on the number and capacity of ships built in the country. He said currently the country has around 250 shipyards with total installed capacity of 900,000 dead weight tons (DWT) per year for ship maintenance and repairs. "The largest production facilities are graving docks at 150,000 DWT and currently one of the shipyards in the country is building two units of graving dock measuring 300,000 DWT," he said. In addition, there are commitments by domestic ship building industry to build or expand shipyards outside Java that would expand the production capacity of the country`s shipbuilding industry, he said. Alex said the policies of the industry ministry to expand the domestic shipbuilding industry include to optimize utilization of the domestic market as base load for development of shipbuilding industry. "In addition to help development of supporting industries such as industry producing the basic materials and components by improving capability and certification of products of domestic component industry," he said. Another important policy is to improve the skills of human resources and technicians through training and certification of human resources in shipbuilding industry, he added. He said mastery of technology in shipbuilding industry and creation of favorable investment climate and cooperation between local and foreign shipbuilding companies are also important.