'Cut levies on pager sales': Executive

'Cut levies on pager sales': Executive

JAKARTA (JP): An executive suggested yesterday that the government reduce levies on the sales of pagers to promote the use of such telecommunications equipment in the country.

"The number of radio paging subscribers might increase rapidly and reach one million by the end of this year if the government cut levies on pagers," a director of PT Persada Komindo, Pong Prasetyo, told reporters after the opening of the first two-day conference of the newly-established Indonesian Association of Pager Operators.

He said the government targets the number of pager subscribers to increase to one million by the end of this year from some 300,000 at present.

He explained that levies on the sales of pagers currently reach 40 percent of their import prices. The levies include value added tax, luxury tax and import duties.

A pager operator generally buys pagers from suppliers at about Rp 300,000 (US$135) to Rp 400,000 each.

Pong, who is also committee chairman of the conference, said that the government can actually cut or even abolish the luxury tax on pagers.

"If the government has abolished luxury tax on handheld cellular telephones, why did the government not do the same with pagers?" he said.

At the conference, a written speech by Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave said that Indonesia will always need radio pager operators to help overcome the gap between supply and demand for telephones.

The state-owned domestic telecommunications company PT Telkom has thus far installed only some 2.5 million telephone lines throughout the country.

"Radio pagers are very helpful to cover certain areas which have no telephone infrastructure," he said.

There are currently 74 radio paging operators in Indonesia, half of which are located in Jakarta. Of the total operators, four firms are licensed to operate nationally -- PT Telematrixindo with its EasyCall, PT SkyTelindo with its Skytel, PT Duta Pertiwi Santosa with its Starpage and PT Indolink First Pacific with its Indolink.

The government will soon license four more operators to run radio paging services nationally, including Starko, Nusa Page, Telekomindo and Gematel.

The conference is scheduled today to elect the executives of the new association. (icn)