VIVAnews – The government said double hike in film import duty is aimed at, among any others, protecting the domestic film scheme. However, the government claimed that due to the new policy, Indonesia’s film import duty is now the second highest among ASEAN members after Thailand.
“We don’t want to apply for the highest. Will it bring us any good?” said Head of Fiscal Policy Agency, Bambang Brodjonegoro, on Wednesday.
Indonesian filmmakers should not be laying back upon the new policy, assuming that less imported films will be circulated. “We want national films to develop by not depending much on the import duty policy,” he said.
The government in fact does not want any side to suffer losses because of the implementation of the policy. “This shows that on one side Indonesia does not want difficulties in the entry of imported films. This policy cannot only benefit a party,” he explained.
Bambang said that the government could have set the duty to zero, but this bears the consequence that domestic film would plunge, which is not desirable. Meanwhile, in Indonesia import duty has never been and will never be zero.
“If possible, import duty should be zero. It's our dream. But that does not happen in Indonesia, because value-added tax must be charged upon the service,” he said.
It was reported earlier that the Finance Ministry had signed the revision of Finance Ministerial Regulation on film import duty. The regulation says that the tax on royalty ad valorem or by percentage is to be changed into specific import duty.
By this new policy, the government ruled the import duty to be between Rp21,000 and Rp22,000 per minute per copy of film.
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Translated by: Indah Lestari
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