R

ed tape and insufficient infrastructure topped the complaints from business people during a meeting of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) Jakarta branch at the Four Seasons Hotel in South Jakarta on Tuesday.

Chairman of Kadin Jakarta chapter Eddy Kuntadi said infrastructure was not the only sector that needed attention ahead of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, but the sector did have an effect on other sectors.

'€œHow can we talk about competitiveness when our infrastructure is in a sorry state. Congestion is a major problem because the capacity of our roads does not match the number of vehicles,'€ he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the event.

The meeting also discussed the stalled Monorail project.

Eddy said business permits were another problem. He said the new bylaw on one-door integrated service (PTSP), which was endorsed late last year, shed some light on the permit problem, but businesspeople were still waiting for its implementation.

During a question and answer session, chairman of the Indonesia Outdoor Media Association (AMLI) Aip Syarifuddin told the audience that the arduous process to install outdoor advertisements haunted his members despite the '€œone-roof integrated service'€.

'€œWe still have to go through many [agencies] to secure investment permits. We don'€™t get a five-hour service, we would be lucky if it [only] took a month,'€ he said in the forum.

The head of the Organization and Governance Bureau (Ortala) at the city administration, Adrian Sutedi, responded by saying that the one-roof integrated service would be gradually upgraded to the one-door integrated service (PTSP). He said once the service was established, it would be easier for the city'€™s Tax Agency to monitor the income from taxes.

'€œPTSP officials are expected to be installed before the anniversary of the capital city,'€ he said.

On the sidelines of the forum, Aip said that to date, the official procedure to build an outdoor advertisement was too convoluted, prompting many businesspeople to bribe officials.

He said people had to pass a series of procedures at various agencies, including the city'€™s Spatial Planning Agency, the Building Supervisory Agency (P2B) and the Tax Agency not to mention fees and tax.

In between, they also have to wait for an official forum within the administration that judges the content of the advertisement.

'€œThe process can take three to six months. We can'€™t let our clients wait that long,'€ Aip said.

Business players have tried to cut the process by submitting all the documents at once while constructing the outdoor advertisement. As a consequence, they have had to bribe the Public Order Agency officials that oversee public places.

'€œSometimes certain officials have an eye on certain locations. Of 1,000 billboards in the city, I can say that 30 percent of them do not pay tax,'€ he said.

The city administration, he said, should use an online mechanism, so businesspeople did not need to meet officials and would be obliged to pay all fees via bank transfer, thus, cutting red tape and positively affecting the economy.

Meanwhile, Hatta O. Simanjuntak, head of the committee for governmental affairs at Kadin Jakarta branch, said rampant bribery also happened with residential papers for business buildings.

'€œThe permit should be free, but businesspeople can pay upward of Rp 500,000 [US$43]. Some even get permits that violate spatial planning,'€ he said.