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As part of its advocacy activities, EuroCham which was represented by few member companies participated in a round table discussion on the World Bank’s Manufacturing Logistics Survey 2017 in Indonesia. During the discussion held on 8 August 2018, the World Bank seek EuroCham manufacturers’ feedback on preliminary results from the World Bank survey conducted in 2017 to 176 manufacturing firms to understand what can be done to reduce logistics costs. The World Bank in this meeting was represented by Ms. Lamiaa Bennis as the trade and logistics specialist.

In this meeting, EuroCham member companies were asked to assess whether findings from the World Bank survey are representative of the main bottlenecks that EuroCham manufacturers face. The roundtable also aimed to learn about remaining bottlenecks in the logistics sectors, that are specific to EuroCham manufacturers. As an expected outcome, the findings from the round table will be used to complete the World Bank’s policy recommendations to the Indonesian government for further improvements.

On 7 August 2018, EuroCham jointly with other organizations including ASPERINDO, ALFI of Soekarno Hatta, INACA, IATA, US-ABC, AmCham, KoCham, JJC, and few ground handling agents were invited by the Directorate of Technical Customs to evaluate the implementation of Minister of Finance Regulation No. 158/PMK.04/2017 on Delivery of Inward Notice, Inward Manifest, and Outward Manifest. The meeting specifically focuses on evaluation of implementation in the Soekarno Hatta International Airports. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Djanurindro Wibowo (Deputy Director for Import), accompanied by Mr. Anju Gultom (Head Section for Import), Mr. Dzikri (representative from the Directorate of Customs and Excise Information/IKC), Mr. Sumardiono (representative from the Soekarno Hatta Customs Service Office), and other representatives from the Directorate General of Customs and Excise.

Based on the evaluation, improvements are required especially in regard to the communication between all stakeholders including airlines, ground handling agents, freight forwarders, postal services providers, as well as the Customs Service Office who will need to reconcile cargo manifest data submitted by each of these stakeholders. Another important aspect that need improvements is that the readiness of customs IT system to allow online submission of the cargo manifest data. Currently slight discrepancies of data may cause the data cannot be automatically reconciled by customs IT system. This would lead to manual reconciliation process by the Customs that would require more time and often storage costs for delay of clearance of inbound cargo.