In the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), this preferential tariff facility is the most widely usedJakarta (ANTARA News) - The Trade Ministry is to multiply its certificate of origin (SKA) issuing services through an online network so that all the relevant institutions will be able to provide the service.
"We have already raised the number of issuing institutions to 57 and 28 of them are already online. We will work to make all online," Deddy Saleh, the ministry`s director general of foreign commerce, said on Wednesday.
He said the government would improve SKA issuing services to take advantage of the certificate for obtaining exemption or reduction on import tariffs to countries or groups of countries in free trade partner countries.
"In the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), this preferential tariff facility is the most widely used," he said.
He said there had been a rise in the number of businessmen using the preferential tariff whereby they enjoyed tariff exemptions or reductions.
Based on the Trade Ministry data, as many as 7,702 exporter s in January-November 2010 had used the tariff preference with 100,020 SKAs with a value of 8.2 million US dollars. Meanwhile, for ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA), there were 3,887 exporters with 23,217s SKA and 5.0 million US dollars.
"The SKA also used for ASEAN-Korea FTA (AKFTA), ASEAN-India FTA (AIFTA), even China and Japan. This is one of the positive impacts of the free trade cooperation," the director general pointed out.
In addition, Trade Minister, Mari Elka Pangestu said that this facility was not only received for major companies, but also for small and micro industries as well. Up to 31 percent users were small companies, 46 percent medium companies, 16 percent for large companies and 5.3 percent micro businesses.(*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli Radja
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