Preshipment inspection maintained
JAKARTA (JP): The government will maintain the pre-shipment inspection system by extending its contract with PT Surveyor Indonesia (PT SI) to carry out the inspection of Indonesia's imports.
The contract, which was signed here on Monday and announced yesterday, gives authority to PT SI to inspect all goods imported into Indonesia at points of loading for the next two years.
PT SI also extended its technical assistance agreement with the Geneva-based Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS) for another two years, effective immediately.
Munti Yarso, PT SI's spokesman, said Faried Sybli Barchia of PT SI and H.J. Vischer of SGS signed the technical assistance contract yesterday.
However, Munti declined to mention the value of the contract.
PT SI, with 18 overseas branch offices, claims that it has been inspecting 85 percent of Indonesia's total non-oil imports.
Extending PT SI's contract should cool down the debates over the inspection system that have lately roiled the House, which is deliberating a new customs bill.
The associations of Indonesian importers, exporters and ship- owners have expressed their support for the pre-shipment inspection system.
Amiruddin Saud, chairman of the Association of Indonesian Importers, hailed the government's decision yesterday to extend their contract with PT SI.
"Importers now feel relieved after this decision," Amiruddin said after learning of the extension.
He added that importers had refrained from opening letters of credits prior to July 31, the end of the contract between the government and PT SI, due to uncertainty surrounding the inspection system.
Amiruddin repeatedly argued that the pre-shipment inspection system has greatly facilitated the flow of imports by cutting importing costs and by minimizing administrative irregularities and under-invoicing.
Meanwhile, the directorate general of customs and excise, which was stripped of its import inspection authority in the middle of 1985, has lobbied strongly to have its inspection authority restored.
Director General of Customs and Excise Soehardjo said here yesterday that in the long run the pre-shipment inspection would not effectively facilitate import flows.
Soehardjo said the directors general of customs from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), who met in Tretes, East Java, last month, had agreed not to use the pre- shipment inspection system for trade within the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) after the year 2003.
"The forum of ASEAN directors generals of customs in Tretes saw the pre-shipment inspection as a trade barrier and agreed not to use it among ASEAN countries after the implementation of AFTA," Soehardjo said.
The pre-shipment inspection was introduced in Indonesia in 1985, under a presidential decree which stripped the directorate general of customs and excise of its inspection authority. The government then assigned SGS to inspect Indonesia's imports at points of loading.
After the government set up PT SI in 1991 in a joint venture with SGS, the main contract for inspection was awarded to PT SI, which then hired SGS as a subcontractor. PT SI is expected to eventually take over the whole inspection process from SGS.(rid)