City wants more from Pertamina

City wants more from Pertamina

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In an effort to increase city revenue, the city council
approved on Thursday a bylaw on motor fuel tax that obliges
state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina to pay 5 percent tax on
fuel sales here.

The application of the bylaw will boost transparency in the
sale of the fuel. As of now, the city administration has only
received about Rp 100 billion per year from fuel tax in Jakarta
and did not know the total amount of the tax. With the now hoped-
for transparency, the city is estimated to receive Rp 246 billion
per year.

Governor Sutiyoso earlier predicted that the city would
receive Rp 246 billion per year if the 3.8 million vehicles in
the city used an average of three liters of fuel per day.

Sutiyoso said the earlier revenue of Rp 100 billion from
Pertamina was unclear and based only on delivery orders from the
oil company to gasoline filling stations.

The city administration has received the Rp 100 billion from
Pertamina since the application of the regional autonomy
legislation, Law No. 22/1999 on regional administration and Law
No. 25/1999 on the sharing of tax income between central
government and regional administrations.

"We approved the bylaw and urged the administration to recheck
the data on the sale of fuel here," United Development Party
(PPP) spokesman Ali Imran Hussein said in a council plenary
session.

Ali suggested the administration not just rely on data
provided by Pertamina, saying that it should also seek data from
gas stations.

Councillor Tarmidi Edy Suwarno of the Indonesian Democratic
Party of Struggle (PDIP) also supported PPP's statement that
Pertamina had not been transparent about its data on fuel sales
in Jakarta.

"The city revenue agency should be proactive in checking and
rechecking data that was provided by Pertamina," Edy said in the
session.