Customs office must be serious in reforms: Analysts

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Analysts cautiously welcomed on Tuesday the reform initiatives recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the Directorate of Customs and Excise, calling on the directorate to do use this opportunity to improve its performance and reputation.

Sofyan Wanandi, the chairman of the National Committee for Economic Recovery, lauded the plan to form an advisory committee comprising government officials, business associations and experts to advise and criticize the customs office.

He said business associations were the best source of information for the directorate to identify crooked importers and exporters, and as such to help customs officials perform their jobs.

"I consider the reforms very positive," Sofyan said.

On Monday, Director General of Customs and Excise Permana Agung announced his office would carry out a 17-point restructuring program recommended by the IMF, aimed at improving the integrity of customs officials and cleaning up the customs office of corruption and illegal practices.

The technical details of the program will be formulated by a steering committee headed by the minister of finance and including business associations. This committee will convene every Wednesday and is expected to complete its job by the end of the year. The implementation of the reform program could begin early next year.

M. Ikhsan, an economist from the University of Indonesia, said the reform program was good, but there was nothing new in it.

"For instance, the formation of a special (advisory) committee was actually called for by the customs law (No. 10/1995). The IMF just recommended something that the law called for a long time ago," Ikhsan said.

Under the customs law, the advisory committee is called the Customs and Excise Advisory Board. It was supposed to comprise the government, businesspeople and experts. The function of the board was to have been to hear disputes between businesspeople and the customs office and submit a decision to the director general of customs and excise, who would make a final ruling based on the committee's decision.

It is not known why the government never formed the committee, seven years after the implementation of the law.

Sofyan noted that the advisory committee should also be empowered to supervise customs officials and recommend disciplinary actions against corrupt officials. He added that the committee could not be headed by a customs official, to ensure its independence.

The customs office has long been considered one of the most corrupt institutions in the country, and many businesspeople have called for the curtailing of its authority. They have asked the government to reinstate the preshipment inspection of Indonesian imports and rehire Swiss-based surveyor Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS), which did the preshipment inspections from 1985 until 1995, when the government returned the job of inspecting imports to the customs office.

Ikhsan is among the experts who has recommended the rehiring of SGS, because of deep concerns over corruption in the customs office.

According to Ikhsan, the IMF prefers reforming the customs office to rehiring SGS, which it consider too costly.

"I agree that we cannot continue to depend on SGS. We have to empower our customs office, but I am pessimistic that the office will change given the corrupt mentality of its officials," he said.

Sofyan also said he was pessimistic the customs office would successfully reform itself.

"Anyway, it is fair enough to give the office another chance -- maybe one or two years -- to show to the public that it is able to change itself. Let's believe that the office is willing to take part in the current reform movement," he said.