New customs bills an improvement: economists
New customs bills an improvement: economists
JAKARTA (JP): Economists grouped in the Econit think tank are applauding the new bills on customs and excise, calling them more consistent with international trade rulings and more accommodative to the roles of the country's authorities.
"The new bills on customs and excise...are important because they address essential factors which have become the foundations of international trade and customs procedures, specifically those stipulated by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade," the group said in a statement yesterday.
Minister of Finance Mar'ie Muhammad presented the new bills on customs and excises to the House of Representatives for deliberation in March.
The Econit economists, led by U.S-trained Rizal Ramli and former banker Laksamana Sukardi, also said the new bills will guarantee a fair trade system since they include various provisions covering dumping, copyright protection and export subsidies.
Econit also praised the new bills for having provisions for that give more power to the country's Directorate General of Customs and Excise, as compared to the current procedures.
Improvement
The new customs and excise bills, copies of which were made available to the Post, include specific provisions stipulating that all imports must be examined by the customs office and that excise values of imported goods must be based on actual transactions.
Econit experts expressed their satisfaction with the provisions. They called them improvements over the current rulings which are founded on pre-shipment inspections carried out by government-contracted surveying companies.
"The private institution which has benefited greatly from the pre-shipment inspections is Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS) which has been awarded government contracts to inspect imports for a decade," the Econit statement said.
Econit also said that SGS received payments of around Rp 450 billion (US$204 million) every year from the Indonesian government.
The group also called for the abolition of pre-shipment inspection and the enforcement of a post-auditing inspection of imports at factory places.
The pre-shipment inspection of imports was launched in mid- 1985 under a presidential decree designed to improve the clearance of imports at customs.
The decree stripped the customs and excise directorate general of its inspection authority and the government later assigned the Geneva-based SGS to inspect Indonesia's imports at points of loading.
The contract with SGS was modified in 1991 after the government set up a new inspection firm, PT Surveyor Indonesia (SI), in a joint venture with SGS.
The main contract for the inspections was later awarded to SI, which in turn hired SGS as a sub-contractor. SI is scheduled to eventually take over the whole inspection of Indonesian imports from SGS.
Econit also said yesterday that they released the statement because "there have been some parties trying to include certain provisions in the new bills to give advantages to certain groups only."
The think tank did not identify who the "certain parties" were.
The Indonesian Importers Association suggested last week in a meeting with Trade Minister Satrio B. Joedono that the pre- shipment inspection for imports be stipulated in the new bills. (hdj)