Customs DG Claims Agency Reform Progress is Evident

Director General of Customs and Excise Djaka Budi Utama has responded to the deadline set by Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa, which gives the agency until September 2026 to reform.

According to Djaka, the performance improvements at the institution he leads are already beginning to show. He cited a number of achievements as examples, such as the ongoing enforcement actions against illegal cigarettes carried out by Customs and Excise.

“Yes, like this (the results of the reforms). Of course it can be seen, it can be seen now what Customs and Excise is like,” Djaka said when met in Jakarta on Tuesday.

At the time he made the remarks, Customs and Excise had just foiled the shipment of 8.96 million illegal cigarettes that were not affixed with excise stamps. The enforcement action was carried out against two containers during supervision of inter-regional and inter-island goods traffic in the Tanjung Priok Port area.

Going forward, Djaka is committed to continuing reforms in both the performance and the structure of Customs and Excise to make it better. However, he said this also requires support from the public.

“Hopefully, with support from the public, we will continue to upgrade Customs and Excise so that it becomes even better in the future,” he explained.

As is known, Finance Minister Purbaya had given the Directorate General of Customs and Excise (DJBC) of the Ministry of Finance a deadline of September 2026 to improve its performance and services.

If it fails to reform, he threatened to take extreme options, including drastically overhauling the supervision system.

“So, there was a discussion that if we cannot improve the performance of Customs and Excise, then it will be run like in the old days, during the New Order era, with SGS carrying out checks at our customs,” he said.

During that era, Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS) was a Swiss inspection, verification, testing and certification company with experience in overseeing international trade quality standards.

With the transfer of these duties, a number of Customs and Excise employees at that time had to be laid off because their functions were taken over by PT Surveyor Indonesia together with SGS.