RI needs efficacious regulations: UPS
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Singapore/Clark
Indonesia has the potential to attract more international courier businesses that will eventually boost the country's international trade.
However, domestic hurdles remain high. The government, for instance, still imposes numerous complicated duties and taxes. Worse still, it has not successfully reformed its corrupt customs services.
These have become the main impediments not only for courier services but also for export and import businesses.
As Indonesia has yet to have a custom-free port or an efficient refund system, businesses have to pay much more to send a sample of products of 50 kilograms and above in comparison with their rivals in other countries.
In countries with customs-free ports like Singapore, a package worth under US$50 or below 20 kilograms will automatically go to the customs' green lane, meaning that they are not subject to physical inspections.
"Should the government increase the minimum up to 400 kilograms, then it will be much more beneficial to the local industry," said UPS Indonesia country manager Dave Metcalf.
UPS Indonesia is part of Atlanta-based courier company United Parcel services (UPS).
Problems are also here as Indonesia does not have a duty drawback system, where customers abroad often let UPS stack their goods not taken by the consignees back in the storeroom rather than pay the expensive duty to get them back.
And it is a spacious storeroom fully-stacked with surf boards, music instruments, golf clubs and other luxurious ordered by Indonesian students through the internet using fraudulent credit cards.
Hopefully, Metcalf said, all the barriers to the local industries can be reduced in the near future as the government has planned to open Bintan island, in Riau, as its custom-free port.
UPS Indonesia has recently doubled the nightly capacity of its courier service to and from Indonesia to 14 tons early this June by operating bigger Boeing 737 express cargo jets flying almost every night from its headquarters at the Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in East Jakarta.
Services to and from Indonesia would become even speedier and more reliable with UPS' opening last April of its intra-Asia hub in the Philippines, precisely at the former U.S. Air Base at Clark, now the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport.
"With both the new regional hub and the new plane, this makes the service more efficient and reliable," Metcalf said.
The new 2,300 square meter-hub provides air cargo facilities and a central sorting point would expedite UPS' package delivery services to all major Asian cities.
They include Singapore, Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Jakarta, Bangkok, Hong Kong, India's Mumbai, Japan's Tokyo and Osaka, China's Beijing and Shanghai, Seoul, Taipei, and Australia's Sydney.
UPS chose Clark to benefit from the Philippines' open-air and custom-free-port policies.
UPS' Asia Pacific Region marketing vice president Matt McGee said that the opening of the hub was to benefit from the ever stronger inter-Asia relation and trade growth.
"We see Asian countries drive the growth in the region, while some others have turned to be the considerable emerging markets. We are here not only to jump into something, hoping that something good would happen, but to provide solutions that help the customers become more efficient and competitive," he told The Jakarta Post and Media Indonesia during a recent visit to UPS' Singapore office.
From the Clark port, the "browntails" -- that's how the UPS people call their airplanes -- would help both exporters and importers reach the Asia major cities and connect them to each other just within four hours at most.
From Clark, the airplanes also deliver packages out of the region, including to the U.S. and 280 Western European cities, only overnight.
Although the airport is currently occupied by UPS alone, it has been the busiest mail and cargo terminal -- well, only during the wee hours actually -- where dozens of plane from all parts of the region come and go within several hours.
Hundreds of quick hands load and unload lots and lots of packages in a steady rhythm while making sure that no package gets taken to the wrong plane.
Perhaps it is a slight chance for any packages to go to wrong addresses, as the UPS' observant documentation system would not let such mishaps to occur.
With UPS' hi-tech documentation system, customers will not miss all the information about the presence of their packages.
They could check out the status of their packages through UPS website: www.ups.com
In its integrated service, UPS will take care of the packages and documents, whatever it is inside, even a microchip.
Nevertheless, the level of services any courier companies could offer still depends on the regulations of each destination country.