Sunday, March 22, 2015

View point: Bad times produce good policies: Visa-free facility to boost tourism

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Vincent Lingga, Jakarta | Opinion | Sun, March 22 2015, 6:36 AM 

Bad times usually produce good policies because the government and politicians, jolted out of their complacency, can easily agree on reform policies to prevent things from worsening. This again is clearly reflected in the latest package of policy instruments launched early this week to shore up the weakening rupiah.

The reform package has been designed to bolster exports, reduce imports and reinvigorate foreign investment, thereby decreasing the current account deficit. The effect of all these measures are expected to strengthen the rupiah, which during the first 10 weeks of this year alone has depreciated by 6 percent against the strengthening US dollar.

Allowing the rupiah to be debased further by negative market sentiment will lead the economy into a crisis with spiraling inflation, eroding people’s purchasing power and increasing absolute poverty.

The package includes the waiving of visa requirements for tourists from 30 countries, including EU members, three Arab countries, as well as Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.

Tourism officials estimate that the visa-free facility, currently available to only 15 countries, including nine ASEAN members, will increase tourist arrivals this year by 1 million, from 9.4 million last year, bringing in an additional US$1.2 billion in foreign exchange revenues (assuming a tourist spends an average $1,200).

This policy drastically departs from the one taken by then president Megawati Soekarnoputri in early 2003, which abolished the visa-free facility for short-term visitors from 37 countries for the sake of what was then called “national interests and national pride”.

The government claimed at that time that a number of visitors, including drug traffickers, had abused the visa-free facility to do illicit business or work illegally in Indonesia.

The visa-free facility is one of the strongest policies to facilitate tourist arrivals. According to the UN World Tourism Organization, the number of international tourists grew by about 5 percent annually over the last five years until 2013 to reach 1.1 billion globally.

International tourism has been one of the world’s top exports, generating almost $500 billion in revenues in 2013, the bulk of which was in the Asia-Pacific region.

International tourism is known to be a resilient industry, never suffering a deep and lasting recession and able to recover quickly because the need to travel, whether for business or leisure, is too deeply ingrained in our societies to be easily effaced.

As a resource-based industry, tourism is also one of the most suitable businesses that Indonesia should develop because of its multiplier effects and the labor-intensive nature of its operations.

Travel-related businesses such as hotels, restaurants, transportation, handicrafts and cultural shows are all labor intensive, the very kind of enterprises needed to absorb the huge pool of job seekers.

As a vast archipelago country rich in culture, natural attractions and heritage sites, Indonesia has great potential to attract tourists from around the world.

Travelers are able to revisit Indonesia each year without having to go to the same tourist destination, as there are dozens of fairly accessible attractions in Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Papua and the Moluccas, besides the world-famous Bali.

Yet, due to a lack of well-designed promotion programs and poor policy coordination, Indonesia remains among the less favorite destinations in ASEAN. This deficiency is quite damaging because the coordination of policies or activities in the sectors related to tourism has become one of the biggest barriers to wooing foreign tourists to Indonesia.

However good its promotion and marketing programs, the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy cannot do much to attract tourists, because the quality of Indonesia as a tourist destination is determined by factors outside the domain of this ministry.

A simple example. Smooth, expedient visa processing and an efficient customs inspection service at airports are more effective in attracting tourists than the distribution of tourist brochures. But these services are not under the jurisdiction of the tourism ministry.

In fact, the ministry handles only one aspect of tourist development and marketing and, unfortunately, not the most important one.

The more important pillars of the travel and tourism industry such as transport infrastructure, health and hygiene, security and regulatory requirements are completely beyond its control as they lie under the jurisdiction of other ministries.

The quality or image is determined not by promotional activities, but primarily and largely by how efficient, reliable and good our regulatory and physical infrastructure (customs, visa, health, transportation, hotels and other support services) are.

The 2009 Tourism Law stipulates the strategic importance and need for the strategic coordination of policies and activities in various sectors related to travel and tourism such as customs, immigration, quarantine, security and order, physical infrastructure, health and promotion.

But it does not elaborate how policy coordination will be institutionalized and managed on a day-to-day basis, only saying that the coordination will be led by the president and vice president and technical details on the coordination will be formulated in a presidential decree.

It is therefore most imperative that the visa-free facility should be supported by good policies to improve the regulatory and infrastructure framework in travel-related services and businesses.
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The writer is a senior editor at The Jakarta Post.
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Vincent Lingga
Senior Editor, The Jakarta Post
http://vincentlingga.com/
Mobile:+62811 945485
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Tuesday, March 17, 2015

The Week in Review: Mahakam gas block in spotlight

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By Vincent Lingga, The Jakarta Post March 15, 2015

The government has finally decided not to renew the production sharing contract of Total Indonesie of France and Japan’s Inpex for the Mahakam gas block in East Kalimantan, instead awarding the concession to state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina.

 Although the decision will end years of uncertainty about the status of the giant gas concession, many complex issues still overshadow the 46-year-old contract, which will expire in 2017. Details, including the terms and conditions of the transfer of the concession to Pertamina, have yet to be determined.

The composition of the new shareholders of the concession is even more socially and political sensitive.

Excluding the administrations of East Kalimantan province and Kutai Kartanegara regency from the negotiation loop regarding the participating interests (shares) in the gas concession could set off social and political turbulence and even protest demonstrations to block access to the hydrocarbon complex.

The issue of the participating interests in the Mahakam block for East Kalimantan province and of Kutai Kartanegara regency is crucially sensitive. Regional administrations have often demanded shares in resource-based businesses, such as mining ventures located in their areas, even though they have neither the financial capacity nor the managerial capability for buying assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

In May 2011, East Java’s governor at the time, Saifullah Yusuf, threatened to close access to the West Madura offshore oil and natural gas block in a strong protest against the central government, which had turned down the demand of the provincial administration for 40 percent of the shares in the oil and gas field.

In April 2011, the West Sumbawa regency administration sponsored massive demonstrations against the US$3.8 billion copper and gold mine of PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara (NNT) because it was prohibited from acquiring an additional 7 percent equity stake in the mine.

Such misguided, unfriendly attitudes had by and large been experienced by PetroChina in Jambi when East Tanjung Jabung regency sealed off 26 of its 140 producing oil wells in May 2013, by ExxonMobile, which returned its Gunting oil block in Jombang, East Java, because of local opposition to its drilling operations, by Mubadala Petroleum of United Arab Emirates in Ruby field in the Makassar Straits and by Inpex in the Masela block in Maluku. Even though oil mining firms operate under production-sharing contracts (PSC) with the central government (through the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force, SKKMigas), mining contractors must still obtain dozens of permits from the local administration for mining activities.

Latest data at SKKMigas show an oil mining contractor requires 32 permits for exploratory drilling, 25 for production development and seven permits for production operations from the central government and regional administrations.

In today’s democracy local communities often use freedom of expression to make further demands of resource-based companies in their areas — often with the prodding and support of civil society organizations or NGOs.

Another important factor for ensuring sustainable production of the concession that accounts for almost one-third of Indonesia’s total gas output is which foreign oil companies Pertamina will select as its partners in operating the gas block.

Certainly Pertamina, despite its decades of experience in the petroleum industry, still needs technical and managerial assistance from major foreign oil firms as its partners to operate the giant gas field.

Total Indonesie earlier said 100 wells per year should be drilled in the block and around 10,000 well interventions be performed annually to maintain a daily production of 1.7 billion standard cubic feet of gas and condensate of about 62,000 barrels of oil equivalent. The concession also requires more than 500 logistical support vessels to operate.

Given the complexity of the operations and logistics, many have raised concerns about the big risk of output disruption if Pertamina immediately takes over the block without the assistance of foreign partners. Also, given the estimated $2.5 billion of annual working capital and investment needed for the operations and production development at the Mahakam gas field and the limited resources of national banks, Pertamina will have to borrow from foreign banks.

Pertamina alone will likely be unable to obtain such a huge sum of foreign credit even though the gas reserves in the Mahakam block are more than enough to serve as security for the loans. The state oil company needs foreign partners with high credit ratings to convince foreign creditors, and Total Indonesie and Inpex, the current concessionaires and the operator of the block, seem to be the best suited for that role to secure smooth transition.

Total Indonesie had since 2007 proposed a five-year transition in transferring the block’s operations after the termination of its contract to ensure a smooth transfer of the operations to Pertamina. But political pressures and rising resource nationalism had made the previous government of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono afraid to make a firm decision on the status of the contract.

Ideally considering the complexity of operations and the big investment needed for production development, the status of the contract should have been decided at least five to 10 years before its expiry.

How well the government handles the termination of the Total-Inpex contract will impact the investment climate in the hydrocarbon industry as there are 20 similar contracts, accounting for 30 percent of national oil output, that will expire within the next five years.
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Vincent Lingga
Senior Editor, The Jakarta Post
http://vincentlingga.com/
Mobile:+62811 945485



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Vincent Lingga
Senior Editor, The Jakarta Post
http://vincentlingga.com/
Mobile:+62811 945485
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Friday, March 06, 2015

Commentary: Corruption damages tax culture, discouraging compliance

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Vincent Lingga, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Commentary | Fri, March 06 2015, 
We support the demonstrations on Tuesday by an estimated 400 officials of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) who poured out their frustrations over the government's pathetic attitude toward the weakening of the anticorruption drive and the bashing of the KPK over the past two months.

The demonstrations were triggered by the decision of the KPK leaders to stop processing the corruption case against Comr. Gen Budi Gunawan and hand over it to the Attorney General's Office (AGO), whose institutional integrity is perceived as much lower than that of the KPK. They are afraid the AGO would eventually drop the case within the detested framework of political compromises.

As graft busters who grapple daily with various cases of corruption, KPK officials know for sure that Budi's corruption case is air-tight, rooted in alleged money laundering practices whereby a suspect or defendant is treated with the presumption of guilt. That is because within the framework of the 2002 Money-Laundering Law, the indictment is virtually the verdict as the burden of proof lies on the shoulder of the suspect or defendant. 

Unfortunately, the campaign to debilitate the KPK and the weakening of the national movement against graft is occurring when the estimated 25 million corporate and individual taxpayers are preparing their 2014 income tax returns, which they have to file before the March 31 deadline.

The bashing of the KPK will hurt the government program to expand the tax base and achieve its tax revenue target of 16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019, much higher than the current 12 percent, which is the lowest in the ASEAN region.

All over the world, stronger law enforcement alone is never enough to encourage tax compliance. Tax efforts should be undertaken as a campaign to nurture a high level of tax culture, which is key to voluntary tax compliance because there would never be enough auditors in the government payroll to examine taxpayers' returns.

About 20 million people have now been registered as individual income tax payers and this number will increase steadily in line with the higher capacity of the tax system to net new taxpayers.

True, strong law enforcement would help develop voluntary tax compliance by making the cost of tax evasion and non-filing of tax returns very costly to taxpayers. People will fulfill their tax obligations if they know that their chance of being caught by tax officials and auditors is high.

But voluntary tax compliance, which is prompted more by the willingness of people to pay income taxes, is influenced more by the public's perception of the integrity of tax officials, the efficiency of the tax administration and the government's credibility in general, rather than by repressive measures. 

A high degree of voluntary tax compliance (tax culture) requires a climate of mutual trust between taxpayers and tax officials and the public's perception of clean government. Here lies the crucial importance of the anticorruption drive.

But this prerequisite is now being damaged by the bashing of the KPK, so far the most trusted and most powerful and capable corruption buster in the country. 

If the public perceives the government is highly tolerant of corruption, taxpayers may simply ask themselves why they have to pay taxes if most of the money will eventually end up in the pockets of corrupt officials. Taxpayers will go all out to find any loopholes within the taxation system to avoid and to evade taxes.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, who used integrity and clean government as the main pillars of his election platform last year, must also realize the close relationship between taxation and democracy. The more aware the people are of their civic duty as taxpayers, the more assertive they will be with regard to their rights.

As US political thinker Harry L. Hopkins, the architect of the New Deal, which was crafted to cope with the Great Depression in the 1930s, once said, "we shall tax and tax, spend and spend and elect and elect."

The rationale is that there is no taxation without representation as citizens demand something — either in the form of public services or a stronger say in political decisions on resource allocation — in return for increased taxation. 

As government dependence on tax receipts from the people has increased, so has the interaction between the state and society, forcing the government to be more responsible to its citizens. 

This development will exert a political impact as more and more people will see themselves not merely as citizens or "governed people" but as taxpayers who pay the government and its personnel. Further down the road, this also requires civil servants to change their mindset from the ones who regard themselves as the dispensers of free public services to those responsible for serving the ones who pay for the government's operations.

Concerted campaigns by the taxation directorate general and generous incentives offered to registered taxpayers have succeeded in attracting almost 20 million voluntary taxpayer registrations. 

Government regulations have created so many disadvantages for individuals without taxpayer registration numbers that even employees, whose income tax is already withheld by their employers, voluntarily registered themselves to get taxpayer identification cards.

However, the dramatic increase in the number of registered taxpayers will not automatically increase income tax filing, unless the government steadily improves the public's perception of its integrity, as reflected in clean government and high standards of fiscal accountability. 
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