Supply Chain Indonesia (SCI) warns that the floating booking system planned to be applied by shipping lines in domestic shipment in early 2022 will create a further sky rocketing freight rate as the system creates uncertainty in space availability.
SCI informs that some domestic shipping companies have planned to apply a special floating booking space system for container shipments starting January 2022. The system is applied by national shipping to its customers, both direct (end) customers and indirect customers (forwarders).
The system, said SCI Senior Consultant Sugi Purnoto, will make difficulties for logistics players, both those of integrated logistics service companies of third-party logistics (3PL) and users who did not use 3PL services, because there was no guarantee of space and booking plans for inter-island container shipments.
This system will further potentially trigger higher and higher freight rate as the system creates uncertainty in space availability, said Sugi.
Sugi explained that the freight rate has been variously increasing in domestic routes this year, from the beginning of 2021 to date. The routes with high volume of Jakarta-Medan and Jakarta-Makassar increased by 30-60% and 30-80%, respectively. This freight increase, he said, would continue next year (2022).
Business players, especially forwarders, have actually called for (government) intervention to this situation as the existing freight increase is contradictive with the spirit of efforts to reduce national logistics cost and to make business more efficient.
Moreover, some government programs have been launched to reduce the cost, including the sea toll program for reducing price disparity, especially in East Indonesia.