City to revise bylaws, decrees on outdoor advertising
City to revise bylaws, decrees on outdoor advertising
Leony Aurora , The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
In a bid to simplify and improve regulations on outdoor
advertising, a new set of bylaws and gubernatorial decrees will
be introduced next year.
The current set, including Bylaw No. 8/1988 and Gubernatorial
Decree No. 74/2000 along with about 18 other documents, cannot
accommodate market needs and are not optimal, said Gunadi Soekemi
of the Association of Indonesian Outdoor Media Companies (AMLI)
at a seminar on Monday.
The seminar was held by the assets bureau of the Jakarta
administration to gather input from outdoor ad agencies and
associations in order to improve the regulation.
The associations asked the administration to consider
eliminating the strategic value tax imposed on billboards placed
in strategic areas because this was regarded as double taxation,
since advertisement tax was also imposed on them.
The Outdoor Advertising Association of Indonesia's (OAAI) head
of marketing and communication Gabriel Mahal said that the double
taxation created the perception among ad agencies that outdoor
advertising was expensive.
"That's one of the reasons why the share for outdoor ads
spending of the whole advertisement cake is projected to decline
by 0.2 percent to a mere 2.2 percent this year."
The Jakarta administration, up to Dec. 15, had received Rp 95
billion (US$11.18 million) from advertisement tax and another Rp
18 billion from advertisement site rental and strategic value
tax.
Ad agencies also argued for stiffer sanctions on contract
violations and less red tape in obtaining permits.
"(Outdoor) advertising in Jakarta is chaotic," said Didi
Afandi of Jakarta Advertising Companies Union (SPRJ). "Take a
look for example at the traffic circle in Kelapa Gading, North
Jakarta" he said. "Some of the boards are horizontal."
By law, billboards are supposedly only placed vertically.
To facilitate the auctioning of advertisement sites, starting
next year, the bidding would be done via the Internet, said
assets bureau head Rama Boedi.
Companies would fill in their bids and submit them through
cyberspace using a software called e-procurement. The software
would automatically choose the highest bidder and send the
announcement of the winner to all bidders.
Indra Pratama of Cinggasindo Galba, an ad agency which
provides full services including outdoor advertising, said that
e-procurement would only cloud the bidding process.
"They (the administration) can easily say this or that company
won the auction," he told The Jakarta Post on the phone. "It's
better to do the bidding face to face as it is done now."