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)