In Indonesia, creating growth centres, such as the Free Trade Zone (FTZ), is a strategy for regional development to stimulate economic expansion. The location of the FTZ of the Batam, Bintan, Karimun (BBK) area has been chosen strategically near Singapore and Malaysia. As a recognized national strategic area, the BBK area demonstrates substantial potential to augment the advancement of the national economy. This research employs the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to examine programs to prioritize strategies for advancing regional development. AHP has been demonstrated to facilitate the structuring of problems, identifying common opinions among respondents, and formulating solutions. The findings indicate that land preparation and permits are priority initiatives (0.122), followed by institutional reinforcement (0,111) and simplified requirements (0,071). As an archipelago, the enhancement of basic Infrastructure is also essential (0.052), mainly to improve connectivity. The next priority should be to improve the quality of human resources (0,051), fostering a favourable environment for investment. The outcomes of this investigation are expected to enrich the corpus of regional studies literature and provide valuable insights in assessing the efficacy of FTZ policies.