Minister Urges Grab, Gojek to Work with Locals on Electric Cars

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi has appealed to Gojek and Grab, online-taxi applicators, to collaborate with local industries to develop electric cars.

"I have asked Gojek and Grab to cooperate with factories that can produce massive and inexpensive products. If possible, the cars get assembled in Indonesia," Sumadi said in Yogyakarta on Sunday.

It could be considered as an effort to open employment for local people, he added, since "they will likely produce cars in high quantity. This will also require lots of employees."

Electric vehicles, used for public transportation such as buses, will become the priority for being manufactured massively, he said.

The Ministry of Transportation is currently preparing non-fiscal incentives to encourage people to use electric vehicles, stated Director General of Land Transportation Budi Setiyadi.

Among the non-fiscal incentives that the government has planned to provide are waiving parking fees; availability of special lanes; and cheap vehicle ownership transfer fees (BBN). The percentage of BNN in Jakarta, for instance, is 10 percent while that of West Java is 2.5 percent of car selling prices," he said.

Aside from those incentives, Setiyadi pointed out that the ministry has proposed for free-tariff on type test as well as periodic test from 0 to 50 percent.

The ministry is also examining a possibility of differing vehicle registration plates for electric vehicles from conventional ones as already implemented in other countries, he added.

ANTARA