"Based on information from a number of stakeholders, there is still fake excise circulating," said Chairman of the Indonesian House Special Committee on the draft bill on tobacco, Firman Soebagyo here on Thursday.
He hoped that efforts to manipulate the excise tax on cigarettes could be reduced.
"As we previously mentioned, the research team from Gadjah Mada University said there was a forgery of excise tapes which stood at seven percent. An effort must be made to reduce it to be two percent," he said.
If this could be realized state revenues would see an increase, he said.
Cigarette excise provides a large contribution to state revenues of up to Rp150 trillion per year.
"Such a large income can be used for interests, such as social insurance," he said.
Therefore, cigarette excise should be maintained and secured, so that there is no manipulation, the politician from the Golkar Party said.
Regarding the visit of the Indonesian House of Representatives Special Committee on the Bill of Intake to PT Pura Kudus on Thursday, he said he specifically discussed the issue of the process of making cigarette excise ribbons.
The cigarette excise tape's printing is actually mandated to state-owned enterprise Perum Peruri, based on the tender mechanism, he said. However, in the excise tape, there is a security system or hologram, which cannot be made by Perum Peruri.
"The hologram concerned can only be produced at PT Pura. Therefore, we want to explore in depth the process of making an existing security system," he said.
Regarding the increase in excise revenues, he said, there must be studies, including impact studies.
"If the aim is to increase the potential for revenue from the state budget, there is also another opinion that the possibility of an increase in cigarette excise would actually expand the circulation of illegal cigarettes. So, that must be studied," he said.
The big enemy of medium cigarette companies are fake excise tapes, Deputy Chairperson of the Draft Bill on Mining, Hendrawan Supratikno, added.
"If they have to deal with a cigarette excise tapes, they cannot compete," he said.
For this reason, the government had again raised the issue of reducing fake excise tapes, so that medium-sized companies would not die because of the circulation of illegal cigarettes.
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Translator: Akhmad Nazaruddin/Eliswan Azly
Editor: Azizah Fitriyanti
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