RI can't afford to wait for customs reform

RI can't afford to wait for customs reform

Djimanto, Secretary General, Indonesian Footwear Association
(APRISINDO), Jakarta

The article by Richard B. Ness "Don't throw in the towel on
Customs reform" in this paper (Feb. 25) was written from the
privileged position of an industry (mining) which has not had to
stand by and watch its domestic market destroyed and its workers
thrown out of jobs by imports smuggled in from Asian neighbors.

The industry's bargaining power enables it to dictate its
terms to our customs officers and obtain services in a "fair and
professional manner" which to the rest of us is just a dream.

The article does not even mention the effect that smuggling in
the form of underinvoicing is having on domestic industry.
Instead, without any basis Ness simply asserts that the domestic
industry is not competitive and is seeking non-tariff barriers as
tariff rates continue to decline.

Let us be quite clear, we have never asked for protective
tariffs. The point is that even if tariff rates decline to zero,
the 10 percent value added tax (VAT) is still payable on imported
finished products and is based on the landed costs of the goods,
the main component of which is the declared customs value. If
importers can collude with customs officers and get away with
declaring an invoice price at a fraction of the true value of the
goods, the importer pays less VAT; sells at ridiculously low
prices and the damage to domestic industry will be major, before
and after the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) is effective.

This has nothing to do with the efficiency of domestic
industry. We have made it clear to the President and economics ministers
that the domestic industry is not afraid of fair competition.
But we are very afraid of the influx of grossly undervalued
finished goods that are now flooding the domestic market. We have
suggested a return to a new method of pre-shipment inspection of
imports (PSI) based on risk management that maintains customs
sovereignty, not as a non-tariff barrier, but as a means by which
the government can bring this terrible situation under control
and a level playing field can be reinstated. All we are asking
for is "fair trade".

What Ness is in effect suggesting is that instead of
advocating the introduction of a system of control that we know
we can trust, we should stand by and wait and watch our domestic
industries destroyed whilst Customs suddenly receives an infusion
of integrity.

We are not "running away from reform". We simply cannot wait
for customs officers to "become honest". In 1985, the Cabinet
introduced PSI out of desperation that a reform of customs was
indeed impossible. We question whether the situation has
substantially changed.

Customs were given their chance and they blew it. The
situation must be brought under immediate control as a signal to
the world that this government intends to put its house in order.

The Cabinet decision last week to set up an inter-ministerial
anti-smuggling team is a government admission that in the last
five years the customs service has failed. However, we must also
have a system to check the under-valuation and misdescription on
a day-to-day, shipment-by-shipment basis.

But a more important reason why Ness' article really does miss
the point is that the proposed third party system is a program
based on risk management called MRTI. Under this program, only
the high-risk shipments would be inspected in the country of
export, unlike under the old PSI system between 1985 and 1997
whereby all imports were subject to physical inspection.

The MRTI, based on a risk analysis system, professionally
managed and outsourced to a third party, would result in low risk
goods such as raw materials for domestic producers and presumably
equipment for large scale investors described by Ness as being
excluded from the requirement of an overseas physical inspection.

Based on our previous experience with PSI outsourced to a
professional surveyor, we could be reasonably sure that the high
risk goods that are being smuggled in and destroying our
industries would be correctly described and correctly valued. So
there's no need to raise the spectre of a 100 percent PSI system.

We would agree with Ness that MRTI is not the long-term
solution to the problem of customs. But our industries are dying
and our budget deficit shows no sign of being reduced.

The new risk management system would be a quick fix, a shock
therapy that we want in place this year. There sould also be a
clear program in which customs would be cleaned from the outside.
Or systems could be put in place to make a return to the old ways
very difficult.

In citing investors' fears that they would be subject to a new
level of bureaucracy if PSI were to be reinstated, Ness is
"tilting at windmills." First, by dredging up one myth often
quoted in the articles of customs itself i.e. that PSI moves the
costs from the domestic port to the foreign port, when the fact
is that the PSI companies have never been known to inspect goods
at the port of export. The goods are and were inspected in the
warehouse of the manufacturer or forwarder so there is no
likelihood of millions of dollars being incurred in storage fees
in the port of export for such investors.

Most local manufacturers of finished goods have suffered from
unfair competition from imports through either outright physical
smuggling or underinvoicing practices.

Shoes smuggled from China via Singapore and Hong Kong have hit
domestic factories at a time when they are being forced to depend
more on the domestic market due to declining international
orders. The production costs of a branded pair of sports shoes is
around US$13. After adding freight costs plus customs duty at 12
percent and the 10 percent VAT the landed cost of such shoes is
about $20 and yet at local stores they are $14 -- the obvious
conclusion being that either duties and taxes were not paid at
all, or if they were paid the calculation was based on an
underinvoiced price, or they were misclassified with a lower
tariff.

We are also faced with direct smuggling in which smugglers
collude with customs officials to bring in their contraband goods
through door-to-door container services. Every day we can go into
big stores in Jakarta and see foreign shoes for sale brought in
almost entirely through such services.

According to the Indonesian Electronics Association, 75
percent of imported electronic goods on the domestic market are
smuggled. From August to November 2001, the Indonesian Textile
Association (API) recorded that around 2,900 containers of
underinvoiced textile and its products entered Indonesia from
China and other Asian countries.

The allegation that customs corruption is causing a massive
loss of revenue to the state has not missed any point as alleged
by Ness. It is not that customs are collecting less revenue but
that they have not been collecting the revenue that is due to the
state. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) the
effective tariff rate in 2001 was 10.8 percent and not 3 percent,
so customs duty should still be a significant part of customs
revenue. An even higher contributor is the VAT on imports, which
will be a higher contributor to government revenue.

In 2000, BPS revealed that customs undercollected $601 million
in customs duties if actual collections are measured on a line by
line basis with what was actually collected. This calculation has
not even included the routine, daily underinvoicing of imports.

Given the massive losses to the state incurred as a result of
customs corruption or incompetence, the costs of maintaining
customs cannot be compared with the fees that would be payable to
a surveyor. The true cost of maintaining customs is definitely
not the $27 million a year as quoted by Ness. It is the $27
million plus the $601 million in lost customs revenue, plus the
lost VAT plus the lost exports earnings through factories that
have had to close. These are the figures that should be compared
with the cost of the surveyor to obtain a fair comparison.