Indonesia's Investment Coordinating Board, or BKPM, plans to reduce the number of permits for building ports, in a move to accelerate their construction, BKPM chairman Franky Sibarani was quoted as saying local media.

He said he will work with ministries and government institutions, including local institutions, to determine the types of licenses that can be eliminated to accelerate the process.“In a meeting with Pelindo III, BKPM and Gresik local One-Stop Integrated Service Centers have agreed to accelerate the permit process. We will map the types of licenses and determine its necessity. Pelindo III’s experience will be very helpful in the process,” he said.

Franky did not elaborate on how much time the agency plans to reduce for the port permits process. As a reference, BKPM was successful earlier this year in reducing the time needed to secure permits for power plants to 256 days from 923 days previously.Pelindo III Djarwo Surjanto, president director revealed that it had taken up to three years to process just the administration permit to build the Teluk Lamong Port in Surabaya, East Java, “If a port needs up to three years to process its administration permit, it would be very difficult to build 24 ports in the next five years,” said Franky, noting that Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration has targeted to build and run the ports in 2019.

Teluk Lamong is one of four deepsea ports, apart from Kuala Tanjung in North Sumatra, Kalibaru in Jakarta, and New Makassar in South Sulawesi, that are slated to be fully operational in 2018 and will serve as the backbone of Widodo’s maritime axis.