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strong>July 24, p1

Business groups have cheered import duty rises on a wide range of manufactured goods that became effective on Thursday, expressing hope of a boost to domestic industry amid the current economic slowdown.

Indonesian Textile Association (API) chairman Ade Sudrajat said that the tariff increases would be beneficial to the domestic manufacturing industry, allowing fairer competition between locally made and foreign goods. '€œThis may help push up sales of local products amid the ongoing economic downturn,'€ Ade told The Jakarta Post.

As stipulated by Finance Ministry Regulation No. 132/2015 signed on July 8, import duties on consumer goods from processed food to vehicles have increased 30 percent, with exceptions for special products, such as alcoholic drinks, which will see hikes of up to 150 percent.

Your comments:

The Indonesian government wants to raise taxes over imported goods? OK, fair enough if at the same time it helps local industries become more competitive. But do not expect Europeans to lower restrictions on the importation of uncertified goods from Indonesia. Low-quality products should remain in the country that produces them.

Silvio Bari

This is not a good policy. Indonesia needed radical reform. It doesn'€™t need knee-jerk, panicked interventionist policies. Over mining and it delivered little.

The rupiah is in fact still way too high, let it fall. It'€™s the US dollar that'€™s going up so using up dollars to protect the rupiah is pointless. Float the currency and that will sort your imports problem out overnight.

Indonesia needs to build efficiencies and productivity. Just about everything this government does is the opposite. Cut taxes, free up investment rules and be very welcoming of foreigners and clean up the place. Have a look at Singapore.

Indonesia is teaming with smart young people, but in an environment of little opportunity and negativity: too many pointless rules and regulations.

The place is still run by gangsters, which is a hopeless situation.

Farmer

I hate to go against the tide like this, but I have to admit that this newest move does make some sense.

Sure, it'€™s going to create inflationary pressure, since competition will be removed from many goods, but on the other hand, the rupiah has been in freefall, and this is a radical move to slow that fall; Indonesians will have to come to terms with the fact that they cannot import as much as they did before. Given the current state of affairs, it is best to cut down on imports and this is one way of doing that.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the total death of the mining sector. If Indonesia were exporting raw minerals, the trade imbalance would not be as acute.

Unfortunately, the whole smelter/refinery debacle was not well thought out: by 2017, the plan was that smelters would be online and the government would not be taxing raw minerals but refined '€” more valuable '€” ones.

Of course, it neglected that it didn'€™t have the manpower, financing, legal framework, power capacity, infrastructure, etc. to do so.

As a result, we now find ourselves in this position. Rather than admit it made a mistake, it intends to forge ahead.

The drastic drop in commodities prices '€” refined and unrefined '€” the glut of smelters around the world, the slowdown in China, have effectively stymied the government'€™s plans.

Chris

The first thing that local producers are going to do is increase their prices, because they know that the prices of imported goods will increase drastically. Don'€™t even dream that those businessmen will give some condescending thoughts about the local populace.

Rendang

Increasing tariffs will only increase consumer costs if Indonesian manufacturers cannot produce things that people want or the services to support them. You cannot manufacture through government policy a demand for garbage.

Loro Blonyo

A week doesn'€™t go by without this government showing its complete incompetence in running the country.

One moment we have a reduction on luxury tax; the next we have an increase in import tax.

Before that we had uproar against illegal and deadly local spirits, after which we had a debate to ban all alcohol, and now we get a 150 percent hike on imported spirits. Oh for goodness sakes, make up your minds on what you want to do.

One thing is now blatantly clear and that is that President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has no clue on what to do, just '€œlip service'€ to get elected that basically turned out to be down-right lies, making him no better, if not worse, than those who are involved in corruption.

If you don'€™t know what to do then get help from accredited people, maybe a mix of Indonesians and foreigners; learn from other countries mistakes.

Learn from their successes. This is an era that is so easy for new countries. So many modes of governance have been tried, so pick the one that worked the best.

After so many years of waiting and believing in this country we have to see this sham on a weekly basis.

Sad is an understatement and my heart goes out to the millions of Indonesians who, like me, had high hopes; hope that this could/would be the turning point for Indonesia and Indonesians, but alas it is not to be, so let'€™s brace ourselves for more claptrap.

Phew