Customs senior official unaware of corruption report

Customs senior official unaware of corruption report

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Despite damning allegations contained in a report alleging
rampant under-invoicing of import prices, a high-ranking customs
and excise officer said on Tuesday that he was unaware of the
report, which claimed that trillions of rupiah in state losses
had resulted from the practice.

Erlangga Mantik, the customs service's director for revenue
and planning, said he had no knowledge of the report, and warned
that any such report should be based on clear calculations.

"If there is such a report, it should be based on precise
calculations," he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday on the
sidelines of a hearing between the House of Representatives
budget committee and the government.

He declined to comment further.

The report was released last week by the chairman of
Indonesian Importers Association (GINSI), Amirudin Saud, and
claimed that under-invoicing of import prices were costing the
state the astonishing figure of Rp 40 trillion (some US$3.8
billion) in losses every year.

The huge losses came from lost import duties, value added tax
and income tax from non-oil imports.

Given such a scale of losses, the report assumed that
collusion between importers and custom officers must be taking
place.

Erlangga indicated that he was open for discussion by saying:
"Anybody can say anything they want. As long as it is based on
reasonable data, then we'll be willing to look into the matter.
And then we will give a response to it.

According to the latest data, the state received Rp 10
trillion in import duties, value added tax and income tax from
non-oil imports over the last three years.

Ginsi claimed, however, that the country should have collected
a total of Rp 153 trillion during this period.

The huge losses to the state have sparked anger among
legislators, with many of them calling on the customs service to
launch an investigation into the problem and bring the culprits
to justice.

It has been an open secret for years that the customs and
excise service is one of the country's most corrupt public
institutions.

A world bank-sponsored report earlier this year agreed with
the allegations, saying that the service was one of the
institutions in the country where corruption was widespread.