Corrupt customs officers must be punished: Legislators

Dadan Wijaksana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Following a damning report claiming widespread under-invoicing of import prices, top legislators urged the government to impose sanctions on any official of the customs and excise service found to be involved.

Faisal Baasir, deputy chairman of the House of Representatives' Commission IX for financial and development planning, said anyone found guilty of abusing his or her position at the expense of the state should be punished.

"Stern action from their superiors is needed to rid the customs and excise service of corruption," Faisal told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

The Indonesian Importers Association (Ginsi) last week reported said that the government was losing approximately Rp 40 trillion (some US$3.8 billion) per year in import duties, value added tax and income tax from non-oil imports due to under- invoicing.

The report also indicated that collusion between importers and customs officials was taking place in light of the huge scale on which under-invoicing was being carried out.

Faisal admitted that the state had been receiving less revenue from customs and excise than it should have been.

"With the potential that customs and excise has, it should be contributing more to the state's coffers," he claimed.

According to the latest data, the state received Rp 2.3 trillion in 1998, Rp 4.1 trillion in 1999 and Rp 3.4 trillion in 2000 from import duties, value added tax and income tax from non- oil imports.

However, according to Ginsi, which used data and figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics and the state budget in its report, the country should have collected the staggering figures of Rp 52.7 trillion in 1998, Rp 43.3 trillion in 1999 and Rp 57 trillion in 2000.

A World Bank-sponsored assessment earlier this year also revealed that the customs and excise service was one of the country's most corrupt public institutions, along with the traffic police and judiciary.

Faisal blamed the mentality of customs officers for the rampant illegal practices, saying: "Mentality is something we cannot change. Once they get involved in such practices, its hard for them to stop."

That's why, he continued, stern administrative sanctions should be imposed as a form of shock therapy for the culprits.

Another lawmaker, Aberson Sihaloho, however, stressed the need to create an enduring supervisory system to help curb corruption.

"Given the complexity of the problem, we need to thoroughly analyze how to establish a sustainable supervisory system to stop the state being defrauded anymore," he told the Post, without elaborating.

Aberson also acknowledged that curbing corruption was much easier said than done because it took more than the custom officers to clean up their act. The importers would have to do so as well.

"In corruption, it takes two to tango. And from a businessman's point of view, the less you pay the better.