Corrupt customs officers must be punished: Legislators

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.