Customs office vows to maintain ship-side trucking

JAKARTA (JP): Director General of Customs and Excise Soehardjo Soebardi has promised his party will maintain ship-side trucking of imported goods because it has ensured a smooth flows of goods.

Soehardjo said last week ship-side trucking, practiced since the Dutch colonial era, is to be expanded to cover more goods when the 1995 customs laws came into force April 1.

"In this age of globalization and free trade, the proposal to eliminate ship-side trucking is illogical," Soehardjo said, speaking at the Finance Minister's office.

"While we are trying to cut time to release imported goods from the customs area, other parties want imports to be stacked in terminals for some days," Soehardjo said.

Ship-side trucking of imported goods involves unloading of goods from ships to trucks which take the goods directly to importers' warehouses.

So far the government has allowed ship-side trucking of certain imported goods, especially raw materials for further processing and basic foods like rice, sugar and soybean.

Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto said he would gradually eliminate ship-side trucking and require the imported goods to be temporarily stacked at terminal warehouses or container yards before being cleared through customs.

Haryanto argued this would increase the utilization rate of warehouses at Tanjung Priok port from its current level of between 30 percent and 40 percent.

The proposal to eliminate freighter-side trucking has reportedly come from the Tanjung Priok port authority and the Indonesian Shipowners Association.

Shipowners association secretary general Barens Saragih contended that ship-side trucking sometimes took a long time when trucks were unavailable because of city traffic jams.

Eliminating ship-side trucking was not the authority of the Ministry of Transportations but the Ministry of Finance, in this case the Directorate General of Taxes and Excise.

The proposal to eliminate ship-side trucking, however, has met strong resistance from importers and textile and apparel manufacturers associations.

The textiles and apparel associations have sent letters to the transportation minister, asking him to reconsider the plan to gradually eliminate ship-side trucking.

They contended that eliminating this service would increase port costs and possibly harm the competitiveness of the country's exports.

"If the minister goes ahead with the plan to stop ship-side trucking, it will gradually increase the existing costs in ports to a worrying level," A.R.S. Djoemena, chairman of the Indonesian Apparel Manufacturers Association, said.

The chairman of the Indonesian Importers Association, Amirudin Saud, said Minister Haryanto's and Barens' reasons for eliminating ship-side trucking were not strong enough to justify a blanket ban on the service.

He said trucks being unavailable during stevedoring was rare; it was only when the trucks were unavailable that imported goods might be unloaded and stacked at terminals' warehouses or container yards.

"But who will bear all the costs if imported goods are piled at the terminal's warehouses or silos?" Amirudin said.

He said requiring importers to stack their imported goods at warehouses or in container yards would add to costs.

The additional costs include mechanical costs of between Rp 5,000 (US$2.07) to Rp 7,500 an hour, forklift-usage costs of Rp 5,500 a ton and stacking or warehousing costs of between Rp 90 to Rp 250 a ton or cubic meter per day.

That did not include possible weight or volume reduction of goods, damage caused by handling and the costs of clearing the goods from the warehouses, Amirudin said.

If the ship-side trucking was finally eliminated, Amirudin said, Tanjung Priok terminal's warehouses and container yards would not be able to accommodate all imports.

He said the port should serve as a transit point for exports and imports and help expedite flows of exports and imports.

The Tanjung Priok port authority should not maximize its revenue from its warehousing business by holding up imports or exports, Amirudin said. (rid)

EDI -- Page 12