Smuggling rose during general election: Customs

Rendi A. Witular, Jakarta

The inflow of smuggled goods to the country surged during the first quarter of this year, according to an internal report from the Directorate General of Customs and Excise.

While the report did not provide a clear explanation of the reasons for the increase, one business leader said it was due to weaker law enforcement during that period as many were focussing on the legislative election, which ended last month.

However, director of inspection and investigation at the directorate Sofyan Permana, said it was the huge size of the domestic market that lured smugglers to the country.

"Smugglers will likely increase the flow of illegal goods to Indonesia this year because it is more beneficial than smuggling to other Asian countries. We have 220 million people, a huge market indeed for such goods," Sofyan told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

According to the report, obtained by the Post recently, cases of smuggled rice, sugar, textiles, cigarettes, liquor, and cars in the first quarter of the year increased.

The report said that customs officials had managed to confiscate some 1,814 metric tons of smuggled rice and 5,743 tons of sugar during the first quarter of the year, up from 374 metric tons and 5,675 tons respectively in the same period of last year.

It said that Malaysian businessmen were mostly involved in the smuggling cases.

In 2003, the customs office managed to prevent the smuggling of some 1,101 tons of rice and 13,579 tons of sugar.

Aside from rice and sugar, customs officials had also managed to foil attempts to smuggle in some 10,982 bales of textile products during the first quarter, up from 3,157 bales in the same period last year. Most of the products were smuggled in via Singapore or Malaysia.

In 2003, a total of 21,092 bales of smuggled textile products were confiscated by the customs office.

The smuggling of cigarettes and liquor were also on the rise, with six cases of smuggled cigarettes and seven cases of smuggled liquor foiled in the first quarter of the year.

In the same period last year, the customs office only managed to foil one case of cigarette smuggling and four cases of liquor. The report did not mention the volume.

During the first quarter of this year, the customs office also managed to stop the smuggling of 29 cars, up from eight units in the same period last year.

Around 99 percent of the cars were smuggled from Singapore, while the remainder, from Malaysia.

The report said that in 2003, customs managed to prevent 107 smuggled cars from entering the country.

Chairman of the National Economic Recovery Committee (KPEN) Sofjan Wanandi blamed the increasing smuggling cases on weak law enforcement by customs officials, especially during preparation for the recent legislative election.

"All government officials were thinking about the election. Most of them were racing to get bribes from smugglers to be donated later to certain political parties. This left the country's gates wide open for smugglers," said Sofjan.

"Smugglers increase their activities here because customs officials are becoming more easily bribed by the day," he added.