JAKARTA - The Director of Fiscal Justice CELIOS, Dr. Media Wahyudi Askar, gave a stern warning regarding the new scheme for the governance of the export of Natural Resources (SDA) commodities that the government is currently developing. The policy which places State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) as the single door for exports is feared to trigger monopoly and oligarchy practices by the state.
He highlighted the tendency of state trading centralization in the scheme. SOEs are positioned as a single export gate that fully controls transactions, contracts, export management, and clearance processes.
"Everything that used to be done directly by exporters, now has to go through SOEs first. This clearly creates additional bureaucracy," Wahyudi told VOI on Wednesday, May 20.
Market Competitiveness Decline Risk and Potential Rent Seeking
Media admitted that they understood the government's argument behind the implementation of this scheme, one of which was to overcome the problem of under invoicing (manipulation of export invoice devaluation). However, if the supervisory system is weak, this policy is considered to be a boomerang for the national economy.
The most watched negative impact is the decline in market competitiveness. Private exporters are at risk of only being domestic price takers.
"The vulnerable point of this rule is the potential for rent seeking. I don't know if this risk has indeed been mitigated by the government, or whether this rule was deliberately created to increase the rent," Wahyudi criticized sharply.
Politicizing Trade Commodities Can Increase the Risk of the State
Furthermore, CELIOS explained that this one-door scheme gives SOEs great power to determine the direction of the market. This full power includes:
Determining the prioritized foreign buyers. Setting export quotas unilaterally. Controlling export access and commodity supply chains.According to him, this too bureaucratic approval process will be read negatively by the international market. The long-term impact could be very fatal for Indonesia's investment climate.
"There will be politicization in the trading commodity. In the end, our sovereign risk can rise, and the country risk premium also jumps. That is the most dangerous final implication," he explained.
Wahyudi Askar hopes that the government has taken into account all of these systemic impacts carefully before executing the policy. "If the risks are not thought about, I am afraid this will backfire and cause tremendous losses for our economy," he concluded.
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