Group wants easing of limit on lubricant imports

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Importers Association urged the government yesterday to ease the import restriction on lubricants, saying such a barrier only encouraged monopolistic and graft practices.

The association's chairman, Amirudin Saud, said the restriction should be lifted to help factories reduce their operational costs.

The state oil and gas company Pertamina is the only company allowed to import and sell oil and oil-related products.

Industrial companies are allowed to import them for their own use but they must obtain permits from Pertamina, Amirudin said.

Pertamina officials who deal with the importers, however, often charge the companies large sums of money before issuing the permits, he said, adding that the permit issuance also took weeks.

The lubricant and petrochemical products currently under the control of Pertamina include solid and liquid lubricants, crude lubricant oil, ethylene, propylene, butylene and butadiene.

Lubricants are used in many factories, such as textile plants, while petrochemical products are used as raw materials for certain products such as cosmetics, he said.

Amirudin said companies could spend about 5 percent of the total import cost on illegal fees just to get their permits issued.

One member of the Indonesian Exporters Association, Anton Supit, said yesterday that managed trading of other commodities created the "invisible monopoly".

Anton said that under the current managed trading, certain export-oriented companies are exempted from tax and customs fees when they import raw materials.

But some of these companies often only sell the imported raw materials at higher prices to local buyers, instead of using them to produce goods, he said. (das)