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.