Teten Gathered with the TikTok Shop Seller, Here's the Result

Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs (Menkop UKM) Teten Masduki (third from the left). Photo: Theresia Agatha/VOI

JAKARTA - A number of TikTok platform sellers held a closed meeting with the Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs (Menkop UKM) Teten Masduki at the Kemenkop UKM Building, today.

The meeting took place early in the morning and finished around 12.00 p.m. Western Indonesian Time (WIB). Based on VOI's monitoring, around 40 sellers attended the meeting.

"Earlier we heard directly that they can no longer compete with products from outside that enter through cross-border e-commerce," Teten told journalists, Monday, August 14.

Therefore, Teten said that his party and the Ministry of Trade (Kemendag) were reviewing regulations to protect these sellers from imported products.

One of the sellers on TikTok named Dian felt that there was no fairness in selling online. This is mainly in terms of taxes, raw materials, and labor.

"We produce ourselves, materials from Bandung, 100 percent of workers are heads of families, we are also taxpayers, but we are very sad when production from China comes freely to be distributed in the marketplace," he said.

He hopes that the government will have strict regulations as soon as possible, because the national online shopping day or Harbolnas is usually held at the end of the year.

During this period, transactions usually increase due to the approaching holiday season and are supported by various discounts from e-commerce.

Another TikTok seller, Edwin, complained about the much cheaper prices for imported products. Meanwhile, exports are difficult.

"As a brand, we have experienced difficulties when we want to export. How can products like ours be subject to taxes and very high fees," he said.

Furthermore, Teten said, apart from revising the Minister of Trade Regulation Number 50 of 2022, there needs to be the same treatment regarding entry fee rates, especially for finished products from abroad.

According to him, this can be used as a solution to overcome the complaints of these sellers.

"So, we will propose two things, in addition to the import duty policy for finished products from abroad," he said.