In recent years, Indonesia’s economy rebounded rapidly after the financial crisis. it could be seen that the personal mobility became frequent，and the transportation in industrial products and natural resources, like coal, oil and gas increased, which made the inter-island transportation soared, bring precious opportunity for the inner shipping development.
According to the statistics from Indonesian National Ship Owner's Association, up to now, the inner navigation vessels in Indonesia rose to 12,000 from 6,041 of 2005. Even though the global economy, including China, turned to weak, Indonesia’s inland shipping business maintained a stable growth due to the strong domestic demand from Indonesia. It was understood that most of the local shipping enterprises, especially of coal, oil and gas transport enterprises, would enlarge the new business. Indonesian National Ship Owner's Association expected that the shipping enterprises would increase 560 vessels in 2013 and the total shipping volume would rise 20% to 1.2trillion tons.
Indonesian government had always taken strict protection policy for inland sea shipping. According to the Indonesian presidential decree of 2005, expect few vessels approved for exploiting oil & gas and relative production, other vessels engaged in inland sea transport and fishing operations must be owned by the local enterprises and meanwhile hang Indonesian flag. Only after establishing the joint ventures with local enterprises, the foreign firms could get the operating qualifications of inland shipping.
With the development of the economy, there has obvious supply gap in Indonesia’s inland sea shipping, not only in vessels but the capacity, for the back-ward facilities, lack of technical personals, and low operating rate, etc. Therefore, the inland sea shipping industry of Indonesia bears great potential for development and considerable economic benefits. There is no doubt that it is a win-win good news for the major ship producing countries, like China, Korea, Japan, Germany, etc.