Indonesia rules out levies for Malacca Strait ship transits

INDONESIA’S top diplomat said the country will not pursue tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Malacca, seeking to calm concerns after its finance minister raised the idea this week.

“As a trading nation, Indonesia supports freedom of navigation and expects open sea lanes,” Foreign Minister Sugiono said on Thursday in Jakarta. “So Indonesia is not in a position to impose such charges — that would not be appropriate.”

Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa on Wednesday questioned whether it was “right or wrong” that Indonesia does not charge tolls on vessels transiting the narrow waterway.

His comments came as a broader debate unfolds over Iran’s push to levy fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint linking the Persian Gulf to global markets.

The Strait of Malacca, which runs between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and a strategic bottleneck for Asia.

Roughly 40 per cent of global trade transits the strait each year, including a significant share of energy shipments bound for China, Japan and South Korea.

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Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, has repeatedly said passage through the Malacca and Singapore straits must remain free and open, and that the city-state does not support efforts to restrict navigation or impose new costs on vessels using the route.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, ships of all nations enjoy the right of transit passage through key chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca, limiting the ability of bordering states to impede or levy fees on navigation.

“Indonesia is in a position where, as an archipelagic state, it must of course respect UNCLOS,” Sugiono said. REUTERS