The Ministry of Trade together with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) formed a task force to eradicate illegal imports or smuggled goods, as well as to resolve and investigate differences in data on imported goods. This was conveyed by Minister of Trade Zulkifli Hasan after a meeting with Chairman of Kadin Indonesia Arsjad Rasjid at the Ministry of Trade Office, Tuesday (9/7/2024).

Zulkifli explained the reason for the need to establish an illegal import task force. According to him, the flood of imported products has been a long-standing problem, and there are often findings of considerable data differences between the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) and export data from the country of origin.

"We find that our import data from outside and the data in the country are far different. So, for example, our imports are US$100 million, our data from BPS, while the data from outside can be US$300 million, so it is very far away,’ said Zulkifli.

As a first step, said Zulkifli, the task force will conduct field inspections to check the presence of illegal imported products and will explore the alleged misuse of HS codes for imported products.

Chairman of Kadin Indonesia, Arsjad Rasjid, welcomed the plan to establish a task force to eradicate illegal imports. According to him, the formation of the task force is evidence of a mutual cooperation effort between the government and the business world to resolve import issues that are detrimental to the domestic industry.

In addition, Arsjad also touched on the issue of safeguard tariffs that cannot be generalised for all sectors. The formation of the illegal import task force is believed to be able to assist the government in determining a more targeted safeguard.

"This is where we look for solutions instead of blaming each other. We really welcome what the Minister has intended and this is very much a solution in the future, so that we can fill in what can be done,’ said Arsjad.