Ministry not to collect 'halal' labeling fees
Ministry not to collect 'halal' labeling fees
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Ministry of Religious Affairs has avoided possible charges of
foul play in relation to its proposal to change the existing
government regulation on halal (permitted under Islam)
certification, claiming that it will not get involved in matters
relating to payment.
Ministry director for religious affairs Imam Maskoer Alie said
his ministry would only have a role in the registration of
certification proceedings.
However, he could not give details of its regulatory
obligations or the other institutions involved in the
certification process.
Maskoer said the payment of fees to obtain halal certificates
would be managed by the Ministry of Finance.
"The ministry will oversee the payment system. There will be
another government regulation on this matter," he said after a
discussion over the weekend, without elaborating further.
However, spokesman for the Ministry of Finance Maurin Sitorus
said that his office's legal department had not yet been notified
of the issue.
"Our legal department has yet to receive any information about
it," he said.
Under the newly revised draft regulation, food companies are
required to register their products with the Ministry of
Religious Affairs to obtain halal codes before they go on the
market.
The certification will only be valid for products that are
already registered with the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency
(BPOM).
Maskoer said his ministry would assign a competent halal
auditor to examine the registered products.
The auditor's results would later be taken to the Indonesian
Council of Ulemas (MUI) fatwa (edict) commission, which is
authorized to certify whether a product is halal or not.
The certificate would later be "marked" as halal by the
auditor, which would subsequently return it to the Ministry of
Religious Affairs.
Despite the complicated procedures, applicants for the
certificates are only required to pay once, Maskoer said, but he
added that the certification validity term was still being
discussed.
"Producers are simply required to put a halal code on the most
eye-catching part of their product packaging," Maskoer said.
The design of the halal code, he said, would be a reflection
of "nationalism, with the figure of a garuda and the word 'halal'
in both Arabic and Indonesian."
He said that, based on the revised draft regulation, there
would no stickers for the certification.
The first draft regulation stipulated that producers had to
put a special hologram sticker on each of their products, which
would have become the basis for payment of certification labels.
The government earlier issued two regulations on a halal
certification system -- one in 1995/1996 and another in 2001.
Both the rulings drew sharp criticism from companies and the
public at large, due mainly to suspicions of possible foul play
behind the legislation.
Producers have complained that the charging of high fees for
halal certification has increased their production costs, thereby
affecting the price of products.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Consumers Foundation (YLKM) promised to
observe the drafting of the current halal certification
regulation, which has also come under fire lately.
"Both the past regulations and the new draft regulation on
halal certification have the same motive: to protect Muslim
consumers," foundation chairman Bambang S. Irawan said in a
statement.