Director General Of BC: Customs And Excise Freeze Cannot Be Repeated

Director General of Customs and Excise Djaka Budhi Utama (Photo: Aris Nurjani/VOI)

JAKARTA - Director General of Customs and Excise Djaka Budhi Utama, opened his voice regarding the statement of the Minister of Finance Purbaya Yudhi Sadive who previously conveyed the threat of freezing Customs if he did not immediately make improvements.

According to Djaka, this statement is a form of evaluation for the institution he leads and he is optimistic that Customs and Excise can improve itself in the future.

"Yes, the point is that it is a form, what it is called, a correction. A form of correction from Customs and Excise. To be sure, Customs and Excise that in the future, will strive to be better," he said when met at the Jakarta Customs Regional Office, Wednesday, December 3.

He added that if you are not optimistic about being able to improve yourself, next year Customs and Excise can be disbanded.

"Yes, optimistic, we must be optimistic. If we are not optimistic, next year we will finish everything. Do we want customs or customs employees to be laid off by eating blind salaries? Of course we won't want to," he said.

Djaka emphasized that his party did not want the experience of freezing Customs in the era of President Suharto to repeat itself, where in the 1985 period (1995, a number of customs functions were frozen to make internal improvements.

Most of this authority has even been transferred to a private company from Switzerland, Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS), through PT Surveyor Indonesia as a local partner.

"What became a dark history in 1985-1995, we don't want that to happen or be repeated by Customs and Excise. So of course that Customs and Excise must improve itself to eliminate negative images," he added.

He said that improvement steps would start from improving organizational culture, improving performance, and strengthening supervision at ports and airports, as well as being committed to improving the quality of service to the community.

"Of course the community when we provide services to the community when there is dissatisfaction, yes, little by little we will try to fix it," he explained.

He added that as an example of improving performance, Customs and Excise is now starting to take advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to prevent under-invoiting practices at ports.

Djaka said, although not yet perfect, the use of this technology will continue to be developed.

"Yes, of course, we are trying to take advantage of the existing technology, such as at the port to avoid undervoices, we have made efforts to communicate with AI. So we have developed the talent tools with AI capabilities. Little by little, although not yet perfect, we have tried to get there," he said.

He mentioned that the direction of the Minister of Finance of Purbaya includes improvements in terms of human resources to modernizing equipment.

Djaka hopes that the image of Customs and Excise which is considered a hotbed of extortion can be slowly repaired.

"We ask for support from the community to support how we will be better in the future," he explained.

Previously, Minister of Finance Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa stated that the Directorate General of Customs and Excise was at risk of being frozen due to unsatisfactory performance, both by state leaders and by the public.

This situation arose after various problems emerged to the public, including the absence of supervision at the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) airport and the case of the entry of 250 tons of illegal rice through Sabang, Aceh.

"We will clean it up. So Customs and Excise, I have called them, we have an internal meeting. We discuss it with them, I say this, the Customs image is not good in the media, in the community, in our highest leadership. So we have to fix it," he told the media crew, Thursday, November 27.

Purbaya said that he had asked President Prabowo Subianto to give one year to make improvements.

"I told them, I have asked the President for one year not to be disturbed first, give me time to improve Customs and Excise, because of serious threats," he said.

According to him, the government has also opened an option to submit customs and excise functions to a private Swiss company, Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS), as it was in the New Order era.

For information at the time, President Soeharto had frozen the Directorate General of Customs and Excise in 1985 due to rampant extortion and smuggling, and the condition lasted until 1995.

"If Customs and Excise cannot improve their performance and the public is still dissatisfied, Customs can be frozen, replaced with SGS. Like in the past," he said.

He emphasized that Customs and Excise employees already understand the risks, so they are now more eager to make improvements, one of the steps is to increase digitization in all Customs offices to prevent irregularities.

"Now the progress is quite good. I think next year it will be safe, meaning Customs will be able to work well and professionally," he said.

He reminded that there is a possibility that the Directorate General of Customs and Excise is frozen, which could have an impact on 16,000 employees.

"Because of this I said, if we fail to improve, then 16 thousand Customs employees will be laid off. Customs and Excise people are smart and ready to change the situation," he explained.