Govt plans to cut paper import duty

Govt plans to cut paper import duty

CIKARANG, West Java (JP): The government may lower duties on the importation of industrial paper and gypsum, which are used to manufacture building materials such as plasterboard, a senior official said yesterday.

"We may be able to reduce the import duties from the current level of about 15 percent to between zero and five percent," Director General of Agricultural and Forestry Industries Sujata said at the inaugural ceremony of a plasterboard factory.

He said Indonesia has yet to produce industrial linear paper nor has it discovered any significant deposits of gypsum. The plasterboard industry, he said, must therefore rely on imported raw materials.

The amount of imported plasterboard increased from US$3.8 million in 1993 to $4.8 million in 1994 and reached $6.5 million in the January-November period of 1995.

The plasterboard factory, the second of its kind in the country, was established by a joint venture company, PT CSR Prima Karya, which is 70 percent owned by CSR Limited of Australia and 30 percent owned by businessman Heinrych W. Napitupulu.

Napitupulu said that the joint venture company invested some $26 million in the factory, of which 70 percent was provided by a loan from ABN Amro Bank of the Netherlands and the rest came from company equity.

CSR Prima Karya has an annual production capacity of seven million pieces of plasterboard, while domestic demand stands at about five million pieces.

He said he planned to export 30 percent of the company's production to China and the Philippines.

The country's first plasterboard plant is located in Surabaya, East Java, and has an annual production capacity of three million pieces.

The Surabaya factory uses synthetic gypsum as raw material, while CSR Prima Karya uses natural gypsum. (kod)