Detiktoday.com – The Central Statistics Agency has released figures for economic growth that have contracted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The economic decline was also felt by the majority of countries that were trying to recover from the effects of the pandemic.
President Joko Widodo, while chairing a closed meeting to discuss the merger of state-owned enterprises in the aviation and tourism sectors on Thursday, August 6, 2020, at the Merdeka Palace, Jakarta, saw that the sectors that were heavily affected by the economic downturn in Indonesia included the tourism and aviation sectors.
“The figures that I obtained in the second quarter of 2020, foreign tourists who came to Indonesia reached 482 thousand and this is down 81 percent for quarter-to-quarter and down 87 percent for year-on-year. This means that it has contracted very deeply,” said the President.
However, the perceived decline has become a separate momentum for consolidation and transformation for the two sectors. The transformation is carried out, for example, by better structuring flight routes, determining hubs and super hubs, and the possibility of merging state-owned airlines and tourism companies to strengthen the economic foundations in the sector.
For this reason, the first thing the President asked to be reviewed was regarding airline hubs, which were considered to be very numerous and uneven.
To note, there are currently approximately 30 international airports in Indonesia. However, of the many flight traffic in Indonesia, approximately 90 percent is only concentrated in four airports, namely Soekarno-Hatta, Ngurah Rai, Juanda, and Kualanamu.
“Is this much needed? I don’t think other countries are doing this,” said the President.
Then, the President asked his staff to be careful in seeing the potential of airports which are indeed suitable as international hubs accompanied by a division of functions according to the geographical location and characteristics of the surrounding area.
The Head of State noted that there are at least eight international airports that have the potential to become hubs and super hubs, namely Ngurah Rai, Soekarno-Hatta, Kualanamu, Yogyakarta, Balikpapan, Hasanuddin, Sam Ratulangi, and Juanda.
In addition, along with the transformation of the aviation sector, President Joko Widodo also emphasized that the management of the tourism ecosystem and its supporters be carried out with more integrated management from upstream to downstream to create a big leap in the aviation and tourism sector.
“Starting from airline management, airport management, flight service management which is connected to destination management, hotel and travel management, and even to the management of local products and our creative industries,” said the President.
