Customs DG Claims Agency Reform Progress is Evident

Director General of Customs and Excise Djaka Budi Utama has responded to the September 2026 deadline given by Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa for the agency to reform. According to Djaka, improvements in the institution’s performance are already becoming visible. He cited several achievements, such as the ongoing crackdown on illegal cigarettes. “Yes, like this (the results of the reform). It can certainly be seen, you can see what Customs is like now,” Djaka said when met in Jakarta on Tuesday. At the time of his statement, Customs had just foiled the shipment of 8.96 million illegal cigarettes without excise stamps. The seizure was made from two containers during monitoring of inter-regional and inter-island goods traffic in the Tanjung Priok Port area. Djaka committed to continuing the reform of Customs’ performance and structure to make it better. However, he noted that this also requires public support. “Hopefully, with support from the public, we will continue to upgrade Customs to be even better in the future,” he explained. Finance Minister Purbaya had previously given the Directorate General of Customs and Excise (DJBC) a deadline until September 2026 to improve its performance and services. If the reform fails, he threatened to take extreme options, including drastically overhauling the supervision system. “There was a discourse that if we cannot improve Customs’ performance, it will be run like in the old days, during the New Order era, with SGS running checks at our customs,” he said. During that era, Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS), a Swiss inspection, verification, testing, and certification company experienced in supervising international trade quality standards, was employed. With the transfer of duties, a number of Customs employees at the time had to be laid off as their functions were taken over by PT Surveyor Indonesia together with SGS.