Jakarta. France and the European Union or EU are partnering to make two of Indonesia's busiest ports safer through a series of capacity-building activities over the coming years.

Expertise France, the French public agency for international technical cooperation, alongside the EU inked a letter of intent on the so-called Global Ports Safety project in Jakarta on Wednesday. The signing took place during French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot's trip to Indonesia.

According to Barrot, the project will focus on boosting port safety and resilience across 12 ports in 8 selected South and Southeast Asian countries. In Indonesia, the program specifically targets Jakarta's Tanjung Priok Port and Surabaya's Tanjung Perak Port.

"The project aims to equip the ports with the capabilities to deal with security issues, including boat fires and accidents, [as well as] sustainability and durability issues. ... The safety of navigation and maritime connections have become more important than ever," Barrot told the press at the document's signing ceremony.

The entire Global Ports Safety initiative has a price tag of 8.5 million euros (about $9.2 million) over the next four years. Both France and the EU will cover the costs. The European bloc will fund 6 million euros, while France will provide the remaining 2.5 million euros. 

The Global Ports Safety project will spend the money on capacity-building activities in risk prevention and incident management. It will also bring in experts to facilitate the exchange of best practices and supply equipment to the targeted ports.

Victoria Dussardier, the project manager for Global Ports Safety at Expertise France, did not say how much of the funds would directly go to the Indonesian ports, only saying that the money would be "shared between the countries".

"These are not loans. [The money] will be directly given through the [capacity-building] activities and mobilization of experts. ... We have selected these ports because they are strategic and have huge traffic. ... So a lot of economic activities are going through these ports," Dussardier said.

Ports are crucial for international trade. After growing in 2023, trade between Indonesia and France has been slowing down. Bilateral trade fell from almost $2.6 billion in 2023 to $2.4 billion in 2024, government data showed. Trade has yet to pick up pace as it only reached $182.1 million in January 2025. This marked a 9.9 percent decline from the $202.2 million trade recorded in the first month of 2024. Official figures reported that Indonesia-EU trade amounted to about $30.8 billion in 2023, with Jakarta running a $2.5 billion surplus. .Indonesia is currently trying to strike a free trade agreement with the EU. If signed, the trade deal is set to catapult Indonesia's trade with European economies, including France. This will eventually translate into greater port traffic.

According to the shipping database Lloyd's List, Tanjung Priok is the world's 26th busiest port. The port's throughput reached nearly 7.3 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) in 2023, up by 0.8 percent compared to the previous year. In 49th place is Tanjung Perak, with 4.1 million TEU in throughput in 2023. The port saw a 3.2 percent growth versus the 2022 numbers.

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