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.