Businessmen still complain about licensing redtape
Businessmen still complain about licensing redtape
JAKARTA (JP): Businessmen are still complaining about arduous licensing procedures, including difficulties in acquiring land titles and building permits, Industry Minister Tunky Ariwibowo said yesterday.
"I received those complaints at a series of meetings with industrial associations over the last few weeks," Tunky told reporters after a meeting with President Soeharto.
Tunky, together with officials from the ministries of finance and trade, had held a series of meetings with industrial associations to gather input on ways to further expand exports.
The businessmen's suggestions, Tunky added, were quite fruitful to the government in designing new measures to boost non-oil exports which last year grew by an estimated 11-12 percent only, far below the 17 percent target.
Tunky said that he and the other officials had met with leaders from the associations of cement, electronics, textile, wood, rubber, leather, food and beverages and vegetable oil and fat industries.
"We have also met with the Korean Business Community to ask for its views on our export drive," he said, adding that similar meetings will also be held with the Japanese, American, British and Australian business communities.
Tunky said officials and businessmen had set annual export targets for each industrial association and discussed efforts to achieve those targets.
He said, in the meetings businessmen often raised complaints about arduous licensing procedures in several areas, including land titles and building permits, despite the deregulation package of October, 1993.
Value added tax
He said the textile association suggested that tax incentives be granted for the development of garment designs, the value added tax on domestic materials be deferred and the reimbursement of value added tax already paid on goods exported be expedited.
Some businessmen also asked for more expedient procedures in opening Letters of Credit for exports, he said.
"We will further discuss these suggestions with the coordinating ministers for economic and financial affairs, industry and trade as well as the Economic Reform Team," Tunky said.
According to Tunky, President Soeharto has instructed that dialogs be continued with the business community to work out more effective ways of improving the competitiveness of Indonesian products on the international market.
Tunky admitted that the declining growth of non-oil exports last year was also caused by the weak economies in major importing countries.
"But we should also look into internal factors that affect our export competitiveness," he said, referring to the importance of dialogs with the business community.
He said businessmen still complained about the licensing red tape at local administrations despite the 1993 deregulation that was supposed to streamline local licenses.
"Deregulation and bureaucratic reform will be continued, to further improve the overall efficiency of our economy," Tunky said.
He added that the government was also reviewing what he called the broad-based (broad spectrum) strategy in the development of industrial exports whereby the government tried to promote the exports of as many categories of products as possible.
"We are mulling over to pursue a new strategy that is more suitable to our competitive advantages," Tunky said. (vin)