Parking firms required to pay 20% of revenue to city administration
Parking firms required to pay 20% of revenue to city administration
Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The effort to increase city revenue moved forward on Thursday
when the City Council approved a bylaw requiring parking
management firms to pay 20 percent of their total income to the
city administration.
"But the city administration should not think only of the
possible revenue, but also how to improve parking services,"
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) faction
spokesman Tarmidi Edy Suwarno said during the council's plenary
session.
Tarmidi suggested the administration provide insurance for
vehicle owners as one way to improve service.
He did not provide further details but he may have been
thinking of the councillors' earlier visit to Surabaya, where
parking tickets come with insurance.
Very few parking operators in the city provide a security
guarantee for their customers, and they refuse to take
responsibility for the damage or loss of vehicles.
The city categorizes parking as either on-street or off-
street, which is on private property and requires all vehicle
owners to pay a parking fee.
With the approval of the bylaw, the city administration is
expecting to receive Rp 24 billion (US$2.6 million) per year from
the firms that manage off-street parking and parking lots in
buildings.
The money will be collected from 420 locations, comprising
124,470 parking spaces: 90,544 parking spaces for cars and 35,926
for motorcycles.
The current decree on parking requires car owners to pay Rp
1,000 for the first two hours and an additional Rp 1,000 for
every additional hour, while motorcycles owners pay Rp 500.
The city has, in the past, had difficulty collecting taxes
from parking management companies, which are required to pay some
25 percent of their parking revenue to the city, as stipulated in
a gubernatorial decree. However, these companies regard the
decree as a non-binding regulation.
The city had hoped to collect Rp 3.4 billion from parking
management companies this year, but has only managed to collect
Rp 1.1 billion.
The companies refuse to pay because of what they say is the
absence of a binding regulation, and also because they claim they
have already paid 10 percent income tax to the central
government.
On-street is managed by the City Parking Body (BP Parkir),
which contributed Rp 7 billion to the city's coffers this year of
a targeted Rp 28 billion.
The dismal performance of BP Parkir is particularly
disappointing to the city because it is a heavily subsidized
company.
"We suggest the administration liquidate BP Parkir for its
poor performance," United Development Party (PPP) faction
spokesman Ali Imran Hussein said during the council's plenary
session.