August 8, 2024
JAKARTA – Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan says a task force working to root out illegal imports has found that many foreign nationals are acting as distributors and have access to local warehouses for storing goods brought into the country.
“They [the task force] will record data on the circulation of imported goods and the mafias involved,” he said on Tuesday in Cikarang, West Java, as reported by Bisnis.
“The Trade Ministry is conducting covert research on products sold in malls [to find out] how they entered [Indonesia] and what countries they originate from. […] Hopefully, we can complete [the operation] in a month.”
Zulkifli went on to say that he would submit the results of the operation to the President, police chief, attorney general and finance minister.
He said he suspected illegal goods trading businesses run by foreigners were “rampant” in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, and other areas and said foreigners were renting warehouses with no official documents to store imported goods and sell them illegally online.
“There are many [foreign nationals] who operate and [act] as large distributors in large malls [and] wholesale centers, such as Tanah Abang and Mangga Dua,” the minister alleged.
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The Trade Ministry’s Import Task Force announced on Tuesday that it had confiscated Rp 46 billion (US$2.84 million) worth of illegally imported goods. Zulkifli, who serves as chief advisor to the task force, said the National Police’s criminal investigation unit had secured 1,883 bales of imported used clothing, while the Customs and Excise Directorate General had confiscated 3,044 bales of used clothing through its Tanjung Priok office.
Meanwhile, the Cikarang customs office had secured 695 finished products, including carpets and towels, 322 packs of nylon, polyester and synthetic leather textiles, 371 pairs of footwear, 6,578 electronic products including laptops, mobile phones and photocopy machines, as well as 5,896 packs of garments, including clothing and accessories.
Read also: Resellers fear, retailers cheer as crackdown roils duty-free import trade
On July 26, the task force seized Rp 40 billion worth of illegally imported goods stored in a warehouse in Penjaringan. “The preliminary investigation shows that the importer is a foreigner, [who] rented a warehouse, asked for the goods to be packed, paid [for them], then sold them online,” Zulkifli said on the same day, as reported by Bisnis.
Indonesia’s textile industry has faced a severe decline since 2021 as domestic manufacturers struggle to produce goods to compete with cheap clothing imported from major textile-producing countries like China, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
This influx of goods has led to a staggering 40 percent drop in the utilization rate of textile and garment factories, resulting in the loss of roughly 85,000 jobs, according to the Indonesian Textile Association (API).
Illegally imported textile goods valued at some $2.9 billion enter the country every year, the API has claimed.