Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS) Donald Trump masih juga gusar terhadap China dengan terus menyerang Negeri Panda tersebut, menuduhnya “berbohong” dan gagal mengendalikan epidemi Covid-19 hingga berujung pandemi seperti sekarang.

Dia pun menyiapkan segala opsi untuk menekan dan menuntut pertanggung-jawaban Beijing, dan mengancam penghentian pendanaan terhadap Organisasi Kesehatan Dunia (World Health Organization/WHO) yang dituduhnya sebagai “pelayan China”.

Terbaru, Trump dalam konferensi pers tanpa sesi tanya jawab Jumat (29/5/2020) menuduh China: mencurangi, mencuri Hak atas Kekayaan Intelektual (HaKI) dan lapangan kerja AS, merebut Laut China Selatan dan “menutup-nutupi virus Wuhan” sehingga berujung pandemi.

Sebagai balasan, AS mengumumkan keluar dari WHO, mencabut hak keistimewaan Hong Kong, membatasi migrasi dan aktivitas studi warga China di AS, serta menuntut perusahaan China di Wall Street untuk mengikuti peraturan AS.

Benarkah China berbohong terkait wabah Covid-19 di negaranya, dengan dibantu WHO untuk “menipu” dunia? Atau jangan-jangan ini adalah sandiwara Trump untuk mengalihkan fokus publik dari kegagalannya mengatasi Corona?

Berikut ini penelusuran mengenai kronologi dan daftar tudingan AS terhadap China terkait Covid-19 dan fakta sebenarnya mengenai itu, berdasarkan pemberitaan media, jurnal ilmiah, dan laporan resmi pemerintah.

Latar Belakang
Isu penyidikan atas pandemi Covid-19 secara resmi dibawa ke meja internasional dalam ajang Sidang Kesehatan Dunia (World Health Assembly) yang digelar oleh WHO, badan resmi di bawah Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa (PBB).

Dalam ajang tersebut, AS melalui Menteri Kesehatan AS Alex Azar dalam pidatonya menuding WHO gagal melakukan transparansi terkait pandemi, semetara ada “satu negara” yang bermain-main dengan kewajiban mereka soal transparansi.

“Dalam upaya untuk mengatasi wabah ini, setidaknya satu negara anggota mempermainkan kewajibannya terkait kewajiban transparansi, dengan harga yang harus ditanggung seluruh dunia,” tuturnya dalam pidato, mengimplikasikan ‘China’ sebagai negara yang dimaksud.

Dia juga menuding WHO gagal menjalankan misi utamanya untuk membagi informasi dan transparansi ketika negara anggotanya tidak transparan dengan niat baik. “WHO harus berubah, dan ia harus jauh lebih transparan dan akuntabel,” ujar Alex.

Sikap resmi itu mengiringi bombardir cuitan Trump mengenai “kebodohan” China, manipulasi WHO, yang juga didengungkan oleh negara lain seperti Jerman dan Australia. Belakangan, WHO menyepakati penyidikan bersama yang independen mengenai itu.

Periode “Bulan Madu” dengan China
Ada dua gelombang sikap Trump (AS) mengenai isu Corona dan China, dengan milestone atau tonggak penanda pebedaan sikap tertancap di tanggal 23 Februari, yakni saat karantina wilayah (lockdown) China dibuka dan episentrum pandemi bergeser ke AS.

Pertama, sikap Trump atas penanganan corona di China sangat positif, kemungkinan masih terbawa suasana damai pasca-penandatanganan kesepakatan dagang fase pertama. Trump memuji penanganan Covid-19 di China Xi sebanyak 11 kali sepanjang Desember-Februari.

Pada cuitan tanggal 24 Januari, atau sehari setelah Wuhan terkena lockdown total karena jumlah terinfeksi menembus 1.300 orang, Trump menilai China telah bekerja sangat keras untuk mengatasi virus Corona “Saya ingin berterima kasih pada Presiden Xi,” ujarnya.
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Pujian kedua diberikan Trump kepada China dalam wawancara dengan Fox News pada 30 Januari. Sebagaimana diberitakan CNN International, Trump menyebut China “bekerja sangat bagus” meski sedang kepayahan.

Selanjutnya, Trump mengklaim telah berbicara dengan Presiden China dan menyatakan akan membantu China “di sisi manapun” yang mereka bisa bantu. Dia memberikan pernyataan itu dalam sambutannya di ajang Opportunity Now, yang digelar di Carolina Utara.

Keempat, Trump memuji Xi Jinping dalam cuitan pada 7 Februari, dengan mengklaim baru saja ngobrol lama dengan Xi, dan menyebut dia sebagai pemimpin yang “kuat, tajam, dan fokus penuh tenaga” pada penanganan Corona.

Dalam pidato sebelum bertolak dari Gedung Putih pada hari yang sama, Trump kembali menegaskan pujiannya pada China terkait penanganan Corona.

Tiga hari kemudian, dalam wawancara dengan Fox Business, Trump kembali menyatakan bahwa China sangat profesional mengatasi wabah Corona, dan dia yakin virus tersebut akan hilang pada April ketika memasuki musim panas.

Hal yang sama diulangnya dalam berbagai kesempatan berbeda, yakni ketika berkampanye (10 Februari), wawancara dengan Fox News (13 Februari), konferensi pers sebelum bertolak dari Gedung Putih (18 dan 23 Februari), dan ketika berkunjung ke India (26 Februari).

Maret: Tuduhan Trump Bermunculan
11 Maret : Robert O’Brien, penasihat Gedung Puth bidang keamanan nasional menuduh China menutup-nutupi. “Alih-alih menggunakan praktik terbaik, wabah di Wuhan ini ditutup-tutupi," tuturnya mengacu pada penahanan dokter yang buka mulut terkait wabah mirip SARS tersebut.

FAKTA: pemerintah Hubei pada 1 Januari memang menangkap dokter Li Weinlang dan 7 dokter lain karena menyebar “desas-desus” yang tak berbasis data lab. Namun, China melapor ke WHO pada 31 Desember mengenai keberadaan infeksi mirip SARS tersebut.

17 Maret: Trump menggunakan istilah “virus China” dan menampik kritikan yang menyebut dia bersikp rasis atau mempraktikkan xenophobia (menyebar ketakutan terhadap orang asing).

FAKTA: International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) pada 11 Februari menamai virus itu Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) dan wabahnya disebut sebagai Covid-19. Direktur CDC AS menyatakan ketaksetujuan atas sikap Trump tersebut.

21 Maret:  Trump menilai China terlambat memberitahu AS mengenai wabah tersebut, menyoroti tidak banyak diseminasi pemberitaan mengenai Covid-19 di masa awal kemunculannya di China.

FAKTA: dalam sebulan pertama kemunculan wabah (Desember 2019), China (terutama pemerintah Hubei) menutup akses publik atas kasus itu dan hanya mengizinkan sumber resmi, yang berujung penangkapan dokter Li Wenliang. China baru melarang penutupan informasi seputar wabah pada 21 Januari. China memang terlambat 1 bulan untuk bersikap transparan.

22 Maret: Trump kembali menuduh China bertanggung jawab atas penyebaran Covid-19, mengklaim bahwa Beijing seharusnya bisa memberitahu AS “tiga bulan” lebih dini dari tanggal ketika China memberitahu dunia soal wabah tersebut.

FAKTA: China melapor ke WHO mengenai gejala wabah Covid-9 pada 31 Desember 2019. Tiga bulan sebelum itu, alias pada 30 September jika mengacu pada klaim Trump, belum ada temuan kasus karena kasus pertama Covid-19 di China baru muncul pada 8 Desember.

1 April: Tiga agen intelijen AS, sebagaimana diberitakan Bloomberg, menuduh laporan korban Covid-19 di China tidak mencerminkan angka sebenarnya.

FAKTA: pada 17 April, China merevisi jumlah korban tewas akibat virus tersebut, menaikkannya hingga 50% dari angka semula, menjadi 3.869 korban jiwa. Mereka mengklaim revisi dilakukan karena angka semula, yang dilaporkan rumah sakit, belum akurat. China terbukti tidak akurat.

14 April: Menteri Luar Negeri AS Michael Pompeo dalam wawancara dengan Foxnews mengaitkan pandemi Covid-19 dengan keberadaan laboratorum virologi Wuhan yang diduga jadi tempat bocornya virus itu dari dalam lab.

FAKTA: laboratorium yang dimaksud, yakni Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), pada 2015 merupakan lab pertama di China yang meraih sertifikat standar keselamatan tertinggi dunia untuk lab bioriset (yakni BSL-4).

16 April: Menteri Pertahanan AS Mark Esper dalam wawancara dengan NBC menuntut China jujur menjelaskan mengenai asal-muasal virus Corona, dan mengklaim sulit mengetahui kondisi sebenarnya di China.

FAKTA: WHO telah melakukan kunjungan ke Wuhan pada 20 Januari. Bahkan WHO melakukan misi gabungan (yang melibatkan delegasi 25 negara, di mana CDC AS ikut di dalamnya) pada 16 Februari untuk mengetahui kondisi penanganan wabah tersebut. Hasilnya, virus Corona tergolong zoonotik dari kelelawar, yang berasal dari pasar Huanan.

29 April: Pompeo menuduh China menyebabkan kerusakan global karena virus corona menyebar ke seluruh dunia dan berutang pada dunia untuk memberi pertanggungjawaban.

FAKTA: Penelitian Universitas Paris berjudul “Asymptomatic Transmission, the Achilles’ Heel of Current Strategies to Control Covid-19” menemukan bahwa virus corona mudah tersebar. Berbeda dari flu biasa, pengidap Covid-19 tanpa gejala (asimtomatik) memiliki kandungan virus di droplet yang sama tingginya dengan bergejala sehingga transmisi sulit dibendung.

30 April: Trump mengklaim memiliki bukti bahwa virus SARS-CoV-2 lepas dari laboratorum virologi China, meminta China membayar ganti rugi.

FAKTA: Pada hari yang sama, New York Times melaporkan bahwa Gedung Putih menekan CIA untuk “menyediakan bukti” soal kesalahan China dalam pandemi Covid-19.

3 Mei: Pompeo mengklaim ada banyak bukti bahwa virus SARS-CoV-2 berasal dari laboratorum virologi Wuhan, dan tak meragukan bahwa itu adalah virus buatan manusia.

FAKTA: WHO mengatakan virus tersebut bukan buatan manusia, melainkan bermutasi secara alami. Hingga kini, Gedung Putih tak mempublikasikan bukti yang dimaksud.

15 Mei: Pompeo mengklaim ada banyak bukti bahwa virus SARS-CoV-2 berasal dari laboratorum virologi Wuhan, dan tak meragukan bahwa itu adalah virus buatan manusia.

FAKTA: WHO mengatakan virus tersebut bukan buatan manusia, melainkan bermutasi secara alami.

21 Mei: Trump menyalahkan China atas “kematian di seluruh dunia” akibat virus Corona.

FAKTA: Hingga kini, Gedung Putih tak mempublikasikan bukti yang dimaksud sebagai dasar kesalahan China.

29 Mei: Trump menggelar konpers, menuduh China mengabaikan kewajiban pelaporan ke WHO, dan menekan WHO untuk menyesatkan dunia terkait penanganan wabah Covid-19. yang merenggut lebih dari 100.000 nyawa warga AS dan lebih dari sejuta nyawa di dunia.

FAKTA: Hingga kini, Gedung Putih tak mempublikasikan bukti “tekanan China” atas WHO. Data Worldometers (per 31/5/2020) menyebutkan angka kematian akibat Covid-19 adalah 105.557 warga AS, tetapi hanya 370.870 di seluruh dunia (bukan sejuta seperti klaim Trump).

Politisasi Pandemi demi Hegemoni
Pemerintah China (dalam hal ini pemerintah Hubei) yang otoriter memang mengunci diseminasi informasi wabah Covid-19 di satu pintu. Tujuannya kemungkinan besar adalah untuk mencegah kepanikan di tengah momen penggerak konsumsi China yakni liburan Tahun Baru Imlek.

Pemerintah Hubei berkepentingan agar masyarakat tetap beraktivitas normal, karena bakal menggelar ajang festival makanan Imlek, dengan mengumpulkan 40.000 orang di ajang ‘makan bareng’ demi mencetak rekor Guiness pada 18 Februari.

Ajang ini tetap digelar meski pasien pertama teridentifikasi virus 42 hari sebelum itu, dan sudah ada data yang cukup mengenai tingginya penyebaran virus ini. Festival ini tetap digelar bahkan setelah pasien pertama di luar negeri yakni Thailand dan Jepang teridentifikasi.

Sikap ketertutupan Beijing ini terbukti keliru. Berbeda dari SARS yang berhasil mereka kendalikan pada 2003, virus corona strain terbaru ini memiliki karakteristik yang tak dimiliki SARS, yakni mudah menyebar berkat pengidap tanpa gejala (asimtomatik).

Namun, perlu pembuktian bahwa ketertutupan China itu memang diagendakan seperti terimplikasi dalam klaim Trump, dan bahwa China telah menekan WHO untuk menjalankan agenda itu. Bukti ini sampai sekarang belum ada, dan hanya berakhir sebagai tuduhan.

Berbasis tuduhan itu, Trump menyalahkan China setelah negaranya menjadi episentrum baru pandemi Covid-19 sejak Maret. Sikap resmi permusuhan dengan China diumumkan pada 20 Mei ketika Pompeo menegaskan bahwa krisis Corona mengakhiri “ilusi kedekatan AS-China.”

Mengutip, kolumnis Financial Times Gideon Rachman, aksi lempar batu (blame game) ini hanya bisa diakhiri dengan penyidikan bersama, yang muskil dilakukan karena pandemi hanyalah amunisi tambahan bagi perang dingin mereka—guna memperebutkan hegemoni.

Wall Street juga cenderung menilai semua ini adalah retorika politik Trump, karena tak berujung sanksi tarif atau ekonomi. Indeks S&P 500 dan Nasdaq kompak menguat, sebesar 0,5% dam 1,3% di hari konpers Trump, dan Dow Jones terkoreksi sangat tipis yakni 0,07%.***

Facts & Figure Marine Pollution

- Only three percent of the world’s ocean well-protected
- 500 dead zones covering more than 245,000 km² found globally
- Over 220 million tons of plastic produced every year
- Plastic kills more than a million seabirds, more than 100,000 marine mammals each year
- Great Pacific Garbage Patch occupies a relatively stationary area that is twice the size of Texas
Source: UNESCO, processed (2017)

The United Nations (UN) member countries, including Indonesia, have agreed to restore the oceans and protect marine life, as concluded in the Ocean Conference. Well, except for the technicalities when it comes to the interests of big countries.

The first ever UN high level meeting on ocean issues has reached its milestone with a Call for Action, consisting of 14 paragraphs covering the illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, elimination of fisheries subsidies that lead to overfishing, to marine conservation.

“There's no North-South, East-West when it comes to the ocean,” said the UN General Assembly Peter Thomson who hosted 4,000 participants from 193 UN member countries in the five-day UN summit which ended on Friday. “If the ocean is dying, it's dying on all of us.”

For Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti, the “Our Ocean, Our Future:  Call for Action” document which will be endorsed into a new resolution by the General Assembly during its seventy-first session, is in line with her vision about preserving “the ocean right”.

“We need to acknowledge that the ocean and the lives below it have the right to live sustainably. We need to have a designated body in the global level that protects the ocean’s right and to ensure that such protection will not be bothered by political agenda,” she said.

However, two big countries namely the United States (US) and the Russia Federation did not quite agree with Susi, as they opposed several crucial points in the Ocean Conference outcome, and chose to display “my country first” approach rather than “our ocean” one.

The United States (US) claimed that the biggest economy in the world had joined in adopting the legally non-binding “Call for Action” while at the very same time indirectly conveyed a message of how the Ocean Conference was two steps behind the US policy on climate change.

“On June 1 our president announced that the United States will withdraw from or renegotiate US participation in the Paris agreement or another international climate deal," Deputy US assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries David Balton said.

Such a statement thrashed the paragraph four of the Call for Action, saying that all UN member countries were particularly alarmed by the adverse impacts of climate change on the ocean, including the rise in ocean temperatures, ocean and coastal acidification, de-oxygenation, sea-level rise, the decrease in polar ice coverage, coastal erosion and extreme weather events.

“We recognize, in this regard, the particular importance of the Paris Agreement, adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change," it read.

To add insult to the injury, Balton further asserted the need for protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, thus, the US did not support the reference to technology transfer as stipulated in the paragraph 12 of the “Call for Action” which stipulates about guidelines of the transfer of marine technology.

French ambassador for the Oceans Serge Segura, who spoke right after Balton, swiftly won the stage after he warned that climate change was real and urged the implementation of the Paris Accord.

“France is committed to upholding all of our obligations under the Paris agreement both for our welfare, but also for the welfare of the international community as a whole,” he said, sparking loud applause from delegates in the UN General Assembly.

Russia Federation, on the other hands, chose to dissociate from the relevant wording of the 13 (p) paragraph, which stated about the prohibition of certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overfishing, as well as IUU fishing.

“It was important to consider the subject’s sensitive nature, ambiguity and range of issues pertaining to it.  There were hardly simple uniform solutions, she continued, adding that the World Trade Organization [WTO] had the authority to discuss such matters,” said First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Petr Iliichev.

In the closing session of the event, Indonesian Ambassador to the UN Dian Triansyah Djani underscored the importance of eliminating plastic debris as concluded during the Partnership Dialogue 1. The event, themed Addressing Marine Pollution, was led by Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan and Norway's Environment Minister Vidar Helgesen.

On Indonesia’s side, the government had registered 12 voluntary commitments which included concrete plan to reduce marine plastic debris by 70 percent by 2025, conducting a regional cooperation to eradicate fisheries crime, and to conserve 20 million hectares of ocean by 2019.

A total of 1,328 voluntary commitments were received — from governments, the United Nations, other intergovernmental organizations, civil society, the scientific community and the private sector, among others — to foster implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14.`

Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti have two things in common: they are famous for their strong role on the ship and both deeply in love with the fishy world of the ocean.

Their loves stories heated up amiably on Thursday at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly Hall — where the world’s policy makers in marine affairs were commemorating The World Oceans Days, with the Titanic movie star praising Susi for her latest not-a-movie acts against illegal fishing.

“Fisheries Minister Susi ramp up monitoring efforts and is leading the way to the new era of transparency in fisheries management by making Indonesia’s vessels monitoring system [VMS] data viable to the Global Fishing Watch [GFW] platform,” he said in a video remark played in the UN Ocean Conference.

With Susi’s move, Indonesia becomes the first nation ever to allow the public dissemination of their proprietary VMS data, revealing commercial fishing in vast areas of the ocean where it had previously been invisible to the public. “This is exactly the type of bolt and elevated leadership that we need more all around the world,” DiCaprio said.

The “God’s eye view of fishing activities” project, funded partly by the UN Messenger of Peace through his Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation, was built by American multinational technology company Google in cooperation with Oceana and SkyTruth.

It provides two version of monitoring information: the general information for the public and a more detailed one — including the identity of the ship and the tonnage — for the authority for law enforcement and legal purposes.

Susi’s decision makes significant contribution to elevate the quality of the GFW monitoring as it provides nearly 5,000 medium-sized commercial fishing vessels that are not required to carry the openly-broadcast Automatic Identification System (AIS), and are therefore not reliably track-able by any other means.

The inclusion in the GFW database reveals commercial fishing in vast areas of the ocean where it had previously been invisible, allowing DiCaprio’s platform to easily analyze — based on the vessel fishing behavior and movement — whether a ship is conducting a trawling, long line fishing, or just a normal fishing.

“Using the algorithms developed for AIS technology, GFW has been processing and analyzing Indonesian VMS data from 2014 to the present, and will continue to receive newly created Indonesian VMS Data daily. Detailed vessel behavior analysis is now displayed through the Global Fishing Watch public mapping platform,” said Skytruth data scientist AAron Roan.

AIS is a maritime navigation safety communications system which originally designed as a collision avoidance tool. While it provides detailed information for the industrial-sized commercial fishing activity throughout the oceans, there are limitations to adapting the technology for use in vessel monitoring, especially in areas of high vessel density where signal interference can cause drop-outs in coverage.

VMS, however, was designed specifically for use by governments to monitor and track vessels, and is required by all nations. It provides more consistent and reliable coverage than AIS and is required primarily on industrial-sized vessels — those exceeding 300 Gross Tonnage — whereas flag states generally have a lower size threshold for VMS usage.

Indonesia requires VMS on all vessels exceeding 30 Gross Tonnage, those averaging about 15 meters or more in-length, allowing GFW to conduct a more accurate tracking and vast monitoring coverage against fishing vessels’ activities on the oceans.

Talking to Indonesian journalists, Minister Susi expressed her expectation that all coastal nations would follow Indonesia’s decision, as the more countries to join then the more valid the global fishing monitoring system would be.

“It will give a deterrent effect to the perpetrators of illegal fishing and fish transshipment. They know that we set our eyes on them while they cruise in our vast ocean,” she said, adding that the public sharing of VMS data should be the global standard for transparency.

Indonesia’s example, with its vital position as the second largest wild-captured seafood producer in the world, has inspired other countries to jump into the project. This week, DiCaprio said, Peru had also expressed its commitment to jump into the bandwagon by providing their VMS data.

Google has also conducted dialogue with several countries such as Thailand and Taiwan but no commitment has been made, said Google Ocean program manager Bryan J. Sullivan.

In his closing statement, DiCaprio calls for more countries and more people to strengthen efforts to conserve the ocean for the sake of the future generation. “In this day, the World Oceans Day, ask yourself: what action can I take, what new bold commitment can I make to protect our blue planet before it’s absolutely too late,” he said.

"That exactly what makes me fall in love with him, rather than with Johnny Depp," said Susi who recently pictured on Indonesian meme showing her bad ass move for blowing up the trespassing pirate ship owned by Depp's movie character, Jack Sparrow.

Supports are mounting for Indonesia to bring illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing into a higher level of discussion in the United Nations (UN), as many countries have shared similar concerns on the issue in the plenary meeting and called for real actions.

However, much needs to be done before the world officially acknowledging such a practice as 'Transnational Organized Fisheries Crime' since additional steps would be required — especially at the lobbying level — to gather votes for any UN resolution on that.

In the partnership dialogue entitled ‘Making Fisheries Sustainable’, all 33 delegations of the UN Ocean Conference who have been approved to present their official interventions were generally of the view that illegal fishing must be curbed for it destroyed vital marine habitats, and that the US$35 billion in harmful subsidies must be eliminated as it led to overfishing.

“We need to make a more concerted effort to tackle such things as illegal fishing, under reporting and harmful subsidies that result in over-capacity,” Canada’s Fisheries, Oceans and Coast Guard Minister Dominic LeBlanc said at the UN headquarters, New York, on Wednesday.

LeBlanc and Senegal’s Fisheries and Maritime Economy Minister Oumar Guèye as the co-chaired of the meeting would present the summaries of the meeting at the closing plenary meeting. The conclusion will be included in the final report of the UN Ocean Conference that resulted to several recommendations.

In her intervention, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said that there should be a designated body to ensure that “the right of oceans” to be protected was not bothered by political change or agendas.

The high seas meanwhile needed to be better managed so that distant-country fishing did not harm resource sustainability, she said, adding that the General Assembly should, in its resolutions, acknowledge transnational fisheries crimes.

“We need to realize that the crimes that take place at the sea are mostly involving fishing vessels including human trafficking, drugs trafficking, illegal fuel transaction, smuggling of goods and endangered species, and many others,” Susi said

The UN members, she added, must establish an independent expert team that would recommend the plan to institutionalize transnational organized fisheries crime and to push its acknowledgement under the General Assembly.

The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) special representatives Emanuel Roux said that his organization had been involved in several operations in the fisheries sector, such as in the Caribbean which led to the arrest in July 2016 of a vessel carrying out illegal fishing.

“Through “Project Scale”, INTERPOL agents in Lyon, with experience in fisheries crime, carried out criminal analysis of illegal fishing activities which were often linked to human trafficking,” he explained.

In regards to the notion to classify the IUU fishing as transnational organized crime, INTERPOL had actually the capacity to do the investigation of such cases, as it offered a holistic approach, providing and reading notices, and sharing information on the modalities of fisheries crime.

“There was also a secure network that linked states and provided investigative support to certain cases,” Roux explained.

While all of the delegations wanted the illegal fishing to be eradicated and even the INTERPOL had said that it had the capacity to investigate the transnational fisheries crime, none of the 59 UN countries members in the meeting were explicitly mentioned about any plan or notion to classify the practice as ‘transnational organized crime.’

The Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister’s deputy for maritime sovereignty Arif Havas Oegroseno said that a lot had to be done before seeing any UN resolution issued, acknowledging the IUU fishing as transnational organized fisheries crime.

“Even if the delegations have expressed that they agree to fight against illegal fishing, do they have secured mandate from their government to give a vote on that issue [transnational organized fisheries crime]? We need to dispatch our lobbying team for that, and it’s not easy,” he said.

Minister Susi admitted that good long term diplomacy was needed to assure that Indonesia was not the only one to leap too far by proposing any resolution on the transnational fisheries crime. As for now, Norway and Sweden have become Indonesia’s consistent main backers on the issue.

“Consistency is the key. It is a long way to go, indeed, because we have to lobby the UN members to secure more than 51 percent of votes to support our notion. If we success with the resolution, then the INTERPOL will defend all countries, including small ones, in fisheries crime,” she said.

His guttural, hoarse voice —due to the cold wind of New York — was not enough to sink stern tone that Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan expressed during several sessions in United Nations (UN) Ocean Conference on Tuesday.

For around 20 minutes in the United Nations’ (UN) press briefing, Luhut talked in a tone that he used to show, back then when he addressed national security issues as Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister.

“The government should help the poor fishermen, otherwise they can turn into anything, such as being part of radicalism. If you want to let this to happen, then do it. But we don’t,” he said, answering a journalist who was questioning Indonesia’s effort to annul developed countries’ subsidy for fish companies while at the same time providing subsidy for artisanal fishers.

Indonesia, and several World Trade Organization (WTO) members had pressed on negotiations on potential disciplines for fisheries subsidies in a cluster of meetings from 15 to 18 May. It is part of an effort by the WTO’s Negotiating Group on Rules (NGR) to reach an outcome at the 11th Ministerial Conference (MC11) in Buenos Aires, Argentine on 11 to 14 Dec.

The European Union (EU) member countries, Luhut further argued, should pay bigger attention on how the subsidy that leaked into big fishing companies could end up destroying the ocean and breaking other countries’ territory by illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing.

The IUU fishing is one of Indonesia’s main target to address in the Ocean Conference, along with two other issues namely coral conservation and marine plastic debris. In several cases, the illegal poaching is conducted by big ships that enjoy subsidies allowing them to fish thousand miles into other countries’ territory.

Indonesia is among developing country members that demand WTO to apply the disciplines only on subsidies that support large-scale, industrial fishing outside exclusive economic zones (EEZ), with negative ramifications or exceptions for smaller fishing.

“They don’t pay tax [in other country’s territory]. They just take away anything, and destroy everything,” Luhut said. “Meanwhile, we don’t subsidize big companies. No! You can check it, I promise you. We only subsidize the small fishermen, provide boats for poor people.”

Such a strong intonation was also displayed during his remark in front of the UN members at the plenary meeting, especially when it came to the government’s effort to win three targets: classifying IUU fishing as transnational organized crime, expediting coral conservation, and reducing marine plastic debris.

In the very first day of the Ocean Conference, Luhut addressed the marine debris issue in the Partnership Dialogue on Addressing Marine Pollution that he co-chaired with Norway counterpart.

“Indonesia has taken strong stands against many of those challenges, including on marine plastic debris and illegal fishing, foreign and domestic […] Indonesia has pledged to reduce marine plastic debris by 70 percent within 8 years and also finance a US$1 billion program of solid waste management,” he said.

As for IUU fishing, the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti took a lead by presenting Indonesia’s initiative in the side event themed “Transnational Organized Crime in Fisheries Industry.”

She was flanked directly by the UN General Assembly Peter Thomson, Norway’s permanent representative to UN Geir O. Pedersen, Interpol’s special representatives Emanuel Roux, and UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) deputy executive director Aldo Lale-Demoz.

Transnational organized fisheries crime, Susi asserted, had to be taken seriously by countries and international organizations as it destroyed oceans, mocking sovereignty, and even abusing human rights.

“Indonesia is calling for the world to take actions […] There needs to be an independent expert team that is established by the UN that recommends the plan to institutionalize transnational organized fisheries crime and to push the acknowledgment under the UN General Assembly Resolution,” she called.

Luhut said the inclusion of IUU fishing into transnational organized crime would allow all countries to involve the Interpol in chasing the perpetrators and to investigate with UNODC into wider economic n business aspects of the case such cross-border tax fraud and international document forgery.

If Indonesia wins its goal in the Ocean Conference, he continued, there would be huge benefits especially in the form of higher economic growth and wider job opportunity for people living in coastal areas.

“We are the largest archipelagic country in the world here. Our diplomacy team knows the task very well. In this issue, we cannot be too soft. We should be aggressive as long as supported by valid data,” said Luhut.

Indonesia is paving a way to further integrate the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme into its coastal conservation program under the 'blue carbon' project.

Norway comes as the latest developed country that sees an eye-to-eye on the plan.

The commitment was expressed during the bilateral meeting with Norway’s Climate and Environment Minister Vidar Helgesen right on the first day of The United Nations (UN) Ocean Conference.

“We have discussed with the government of Norway about the blue carbon, illegal, unreported, and unregulated [IUU] fishing, as well as the capacity building. We asked for their support,” said the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti, in New York on Tuesday.

The ‘blue carbon’ is a term for the carbon that is sequestered and stored by marine and coastal wetland ecosystems — such as sea grasses, mangroves, and tidal marshes — not just in the plants themselves, but also in the soils.

Dozens of reports have indicated that these coastal wetlands are able to store larger amounts of carbon than that of the rainforest ecosystem. A CIFOR study in 2015, for example, found that mangrove ecosystems store significant amount of carbon – up to 5 times more than tropical forests.

According to Vidar, Indonesia holds a significant share of the world’s sea grass meadow and mangrove forests which are important for the mitigation of climate change due to their roles as natural sinks for atmospheric CO2 and may be responsible for the significant role on the ocean annual net CO2 uptake.

“Indonesia has initiated research on coastal carbon by conducting carbon stock inventory on sea grass and mangrove ecosystems in 11 areas, we are still in progress with additional improvement aspects such as modeling and mapping carbon stock,” Vidar said.

Carbon stock of Indonesia’s mangrove and sea grass is estimated 3,4 PgC, about 17 percent of the word’s blue carbon reservoir. “Norways initiative and grant for the purpose to promote REDD+ should be expanded to include also healthy oceans and blue carbon initiative to promote the effort of restoration and conservation of coastal wetlands which have multiple ecosystem services and benefits to society,” Vidar said.

Indonesia currently has around 3 million hectares of mangroves that store some 3 billion tons of carbon. If Indonesia’s coastal potential is unlocked it will absorb 138 tons equivalent of carbon per year, or 25 percent of the world’s carbon emission.

Historically, it is not the first time for Norway to provide financial support for Indonesia under the REDD+ scheme. In 2010, a letter of intent was signed to reduce forest-based gas emissions in return for financial REDD+ support of up to US$1 billion.

However, if the commitment ends up into real action in the future, it will be the first time for Norway to conduct RDD+ with Indonesia under the blue carbon initiative.

“They have been helping Indonesia very seriously in the climate change issue in the past, such as helping the preservation of our rainforest, peat lands, and taming the forest fore. Now, we expect them to join us to the coast, because marine is part of Norway’s life,” Susi said.

According to the Maritime and Fisheries Ministry's data, the carbon trade market has reached more than US$140 billion per year, with 70 percent of it came from European countries.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as part of its mission to reduce threats to our global climate system, promotes the sustainable management, conservation, and enhancement of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases, including those in coastal marine ecosystems.

According to the World Bank study, the blue carbon sinks, such as mangroves and other vegetated ocean habitats, sequester 25 percent of the extra carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and also protect coastal communities from floods and storms.

Thus for Indonesia, the new REDD+ scheme can be implemented as part of its nine voluntary commitments in the UN Ocean Conference, where the country has vowed to substantially enlarge its maritime conservation area and conserve 20 million hectares of water conservation area by 2019.

If the world populace — especially Chinese and Indonesian — keep littering the Earth with plastic wastes with no drastic changes, we might see more of the fossil fuel-based polymers swimming in our oceans than of the fishes, in the next 33 years.

That was what the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres warned in his remarks during the plenary meeting of the Ocean Conference at the UN headquarters in New York, on Monday.

“Pollution, overfishing and the effects of climate change are severely damaging the health of our oceans. According to one recent study, plastic could outweigh fish, if nothing happens, in our seas by 2050,” he said.

Plastic debris is among main problems addressed in the UN’s maiden Ocean Conference. It puts Indonesia in a gawky situation because it holds status as one of the main culprits while it must lead a fight against such a problem in the event.

China and Indonesia — which has been appointed as one of the vice presidents of the conference — are two biggest sources of plastic pollution in the oceans, according to the UN General Assembly president Peter Thomson.

In a bid to suggest the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) members to join effort to curb plastic debris, Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Panjaitan hosted a lunch meeting with the ASEAN delegates on the sideline of the Ocean Conference Monday.

He previewed the forthcoming Summit Conference on Plastic Debris which was set to be launched in Bali in September, and would be attended by China, India, the United States (US), Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and ASEAN countries.

"Marine plastic debris has caused US$1.2 billion worth of losses in the fisheries, shipping, tourism, and insurance businesses. This may lead to a catastrophe if we don’t take urgent acts, because unemployment may lead to poverty and social problems and will eventually fuel radicalism and terrorism,” he said in a press statement.

A US-based non-government environmental organization Trash Free Seas Alliance (TFSA) revealed that micro plastics — as part of the 8 million tons plastic that tainted the oceans each year — have been found in 28 percent of the fish in Indonesia’s markets. Attending the Ocean Conference, TFSA wants to reduce the plastics in the ocean by half in 2025.

According to Luhut, Indonesia had so far cooperated with the World Bank, Denmark, and the US to conduct a research on the plastic level in the fishes. He reiterated that the global industries highly contributed to plastic debris.

“Several researches have suggested that the plastic debris are also dumped by the ships. It turns out that the two third of the world’s plastic wastes come from South Asia region,” Luhut said.

He further said that the Ministry had analyzed and made several action plans to deal with the marine debris, such as massive public campaign against plastic littering, reduction in the plastic production and usage, as well as controlling waste managements both on land and at sea.

"On regional level, we cooperate with local administrations in the waste management, urge them to control the wastes, and to prevent plastics wastes in the ocean. On national level, we launch a campaign to change the public paradigm about wastes and teach our young generation, through the curriculum, to preserve the coastline," Luhut said.

Last year, Indonesia saw one of its measures on ‘plastic waste reduction’ ended up in failure. In just eight months after the national policy requiring stores to charge for plastic shopping bags implemented, the country revoked the rules.

Responding on the plastic debris issue, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti acknowledged that dealing with plastic debris was not an easy task as it must involve many parties from the national to local level.

“We keep on launching the national campaign on the issue. However, the local leaders must also take a lead, because the problem also lies in the domestic level, related to the people's habit, attitude, and awareness,” she said.

In the Ocean Conference on Monday, the UN called for concrete steps from reducing pollution, to cleaning up plastic waste.

“I call for a step change, from local and national initiatives to an urgent, coordinated international effort […] Improving the health of our oceans is a test for multilateralism, and we cannot afford to fail. I call on all member states to engage in the dialogue necessary to define a new model for the future governance of our oceans,” Gutteres said.

It took exactly 45 years for the United Nations (UN) to eventually focus its attention on marine issues more than ever, by holding its maiden Ocean Conference, paving a new ground for Indonesia to bring its fight against illegal fishing to a higher level.

In the UN’s first conference on environment in Stockholm, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was deemed as ‘sparking controversy’ for linking environment to poverty during his remark on on June 5, 1972.

But as he has been proven right, and more studies show that the marine is one of the most vital nature-related industries which provide jobs for over 58 million people worldwide, the UN finally regrouped its members in the Ocean Conference at the UN Headquarter, New York.

“Today we all know that environmental protection and economic development are inseparable. Without a healthy planet, people will not prosper,” said Sweden’s deputy prime minister Isabelle Lovin, at the UN plenary meeting on Monday.

The world ocean, Isabelle said, was now 30 percent more acidic than in pre-industrial times, and big predatory fish stocks had declined by some 70 to 90 percent. “The surface waters are getting warmer and in some areas there are more micro-plastics than plankton,” she revealed.

Sweden, along with Fiji, co-hosts the conference as the president of the event, which runs through Friday and gathers four world leaders, one vice president, four prime ministers, one prince, one deputy prime minister, 42 ministers, six vice ministers, and 46 international non-government organizations.

Indonesia, whose coastal line is the world’s second longest after Canada and its oceans are the home of at least 11 natural breeding grounds for the world fishes, takes the forum seriously to address those aforementioned issues that have become its long concerns.

Led by Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Panjaitan and Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia delegations aim for more real actions on the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, as well as marine plastic debris, and coral conservation.

“The tone has been getting in tune. Generally, the speakers acknowledged the impact of IUU fishing that hit the member countries. Nauru for example said that IUU fishing is the entry gate of other crimes such as drugs, smuggling, and violence against humanity,” Minister Susi told journalists.

Indonesia, she continued, would promote its “bold and tempered” measures against such a crime in order to save the ocean. “In the last two years, I have been well known for my bad action on blowing up ships. There is no other effective way […] We have seen our fish stocks increased from only 6.5 million tons to 12.5 million tons,” Susi further explained.

As one of the vice presidents in the Ocean Conference, Indonesia — in cooperation with Norway, Timor Leste, Interpol, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime {UNODC) — would use the opportunity to hold a high-level side event on Transnational Organized Crime in the Fisheries Industry.

“The IUU fishing is done by transnational business entities. That’s why we try to promote the IUU fishing [to be categorized] into trans-national organized crime. If this is approved, it will help small countries to fight IUU fishing,” she said in her remarks during the side-event forum on ‘The Forgotten Fisheries.’

Meanwhile, Luhut Panjaitan said that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo administration fully supported Susi’s tough measures against illegal fishing, and would try to promote a real output to address the IUU fishing in the Ocean Conference.

“It causes toothache to those who are now unable to rob our fishes, due to Bu Susi’s measures,” he said during a gathering with Indonesian diaspora, held by Indonesian Consulate General (KJRI) in New York.

In the conference Indonesia would also present its nine voluntary commitments in the forum, aiming to reach an accordance among the UN members to address the IUU fishing and two other major issues, the coral conservation and marine debris, more seriously.

Arif Gunawan Sulistiyono & Anton Hermansyah

“2015 is a tough year for all of us, a year that full of challenge especially in the finance sector," said President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in his remark during the initial opening bell of 2016, on Jan. 4 at Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX).

Unfortunately, he saw the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) dropped at that morning, as if ignoring optimisms that he had shared. The market seemed worrying the dull Chinese stocks market more than the bright Indonesian outlook that Jokowi promising at that moment.

Looking at the domestic news the President had brought, one should find a fair achievement, with 4.7 percent of economic growth or an inch-below the government’s target of 5 percent, and grabbed Rp 1,491.7 trillion of state revenue, or 85 percent of the target. They were all achieved during the sluggish world economy, which is not an easy job.

“Many people doubts about state budget realization. But you could ask Coordinating Economic Minister and Finance Minister that I personally control the state revenue every morning, every midnight,” said Jokowi.

Jokowi’s hard work, indeed, has brought the tax revenue to a new-high record, above Rp 1,000 trillion or the first time in Indonesian history. However, the sky-roofing tax revenue in 2015 targeted at Rp 1,294 trillion, a 14 percent increase compare to 2014 target at Rp 1,072 trillion ended with a red mark.

It has led to a tax shortfall at around 18 percent, an Rp234 trillion deficit, as the finance minister only booked Rp 1.060 trillion of tax revenue. The 18 percent shortfall, based on budget reports 2005-2015 that thejakartapost.com compiled, is the worst shortfall in the last decade.

Amid the situation, Jokowi administration has set a high-bar of tax-revenue target in 2016 at Rp 1,368 trillion, or a 5 percent increase (year on year). In turns, the new target invites more skeptical voices on the tax-office’s ability in completing the task.

Huge potential
Tax observer Parwito argued that the 5 percent increase of the 2016 tax-revenue target is actually a conservative number because it represents a natural growth, in a very big pond of “tax fishes”. Especially, Indonesian economy has a 5.5 percent compounded annual growth rate in the last five years.

“I’d say the tax officers do not have to launch extra efforts to reach that target. They can just sit back and wait for the tax payers to come and pay. But the problem is they are too lazy, they don’t want to perform especially amid bad tax administration,” he said to thejakartapost.com on Tuesday.

Looking at the tax revenue that was achieved by only 82 percent of the 2015 target, he underlined that the problem is not in the sluggish economy—which Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution and Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro used as the scapegoat.

Parwito rejected it. He believed that the problem is more technical, in the tax office itself such as limited numbers of tax officers, poor tax administration, obsolete technology, the “lazy” officers—despite the increased remuneration, and lack of authority to access bank’s data.

Assuming that Indonesia was in crisis in 2015 with minus growth in the economy, he argued, the tax office can still attempt to collect payable-taxes back to five years before (2010) during its collection statute expiration date (CSED). Before the 2007 Tax Law revision, the expiration date was even longer, up to 10 years.

As a former-tax office director (taking office in April 2006-July 2009), Darmin should know it better. This is how the tax office works, by collecting the current tax liabilities as well as the back taxes (payable tax liabilities). Thus, the tax collection performance is not necessarily in line with the economic situation.

“Therefore, during President Gus Dur era in 1999 when the economic growth was near zero [0.62 percent], the tax office managed to fill the target by almost 99 percent because they collect the corporations’ back taxes, up to 10 years period before it,” Parwito explained.

The technical and human resource problems in tax collection. He believed tax officers can perform much better if “Gayus mentality” is totally purged from the office. All those internal problems in tax office, have led to the low tax ratio and limited tax base.

Based on the tax agency’s latest published data (as of March 2015), there were only 28 million workers in the country who have signed for tax identification number (NPWP), out of around 50 million to 60 million employees who supposed to become individual tax-payers (WP). 

And guess what? Only half of 28 million workers holding NPWP routinely submit their tax forms (SPT) and—at the same time by submitting SPT, pay their income-tax regularly.

Data on institutional tax-payers of the country is even worse. The latest data, published on 2014, showed that out of 1.2 million companies which have had NPWP, only 46 percent of them or around 550.000 companies that submitted their SPT. And the rest? Untraceable.

It is no wonder then, that Indonesia is among the countries whose tax-ratio—the total tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP)—is very low, at 12 percent. It is far below Vietnam (13.8 percent), Singapore (14.2 percent), Philippines (14.4 percent), Malaysia (15.5 percent), and Thailand (17 percent).

Jokowi, during his campaign, pledged to increase Indonesian tax ratio to around 16 percent. But looking at his first year of reign, nothing seemed to have changed. The big ambitious target in 2015 had yet to be followed up with the better tax policies and administration.

Indeed, some measures have been made such as issuing tax amnesty plan, tax incentives for asset revaluation, and other tax incentives to boost the industry which ultimately increase tax income. But the realizations and even the results are yet to be seen as it may take years to impact.

It is normal, then, to see many criticism sparked on the ‘ambitious’ 2016 tax-revenue target, leading recommendation to revise down the target, to a “more realistic level” as University of Indonesia taxation expert Darussalam.

And we expect the Finance Minister, who scheduled to join the tax office’s executive meeting (Rapim) today (Jan. 12) will evaluate the tax office performance, get deeper into the core of the problems, and come out with scalable programs on taxation rule, Tax Law revision, and tax reformation.***

While the government is still estimating how long will it take for the tax amnesty Law to affect the real sector, Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) president director Tito Sulistio has personally felt the impact.

For real, it made him taking a 7 kilometers walk from his skyscraper office building at SCBD area, to his house in Pondok Indah, South Jakarta.

Two global ratings agencies, Fitch Ratings and Moody’s, have appraised the coming tax amnesty policy in Indonesia as it will help bolster the state revenue and especially the rupiah currency, in the short-term.

The move is credit positive, as it underscores President Joko Widodo’s continued commitment to reform, and marks the first significant step to offset the impact of low oil prices and softening growth on government revenues.

“We expect a positive effect on revenues, but the likely uptake rate and the extent of the boost to income cannot yet be reliably estimated, given uncertain global conditions and partly because the bill does not specify enhanced enforcement mechanisms, such as higher penalties for non-compliance,” said Moody’s spokesperson Hector Lim in a press statement on Friday.

However, the ratings firm concerned of the low government revenue at only 13 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, the lowest among investment grade countries. The total government revenue dropped 1.7 percent last year, largely due to lower oil and gas receipts.

Fitch shared the same concern, saying that Indonesia's small fiscal base is a credit weakness, as only four out of 113 rated sovereigns have a smaller revenue intake as a percentage of GDP and they are in lower rating categories.

“A larger revenue base would mean less fiscal rigidity and vulnerability to public finance shocks while enabling greater infrastructure investment to facilitate higher growth. Indonesia has also historically had a relatively large revenue dependence on commodities, which a larger fiscal base would mitigate,” Fitch’s director sovereigns Thomas Rookmarker wrote in his report.

The amnesty scheme, which will run through March 2017, will charge tax evaders a 4 percent to 10 percent penalty on assets, depending on how soon they declare them. If holders repatriate their assets, which must be kept in Indonesia for at least three years, the rate will halve.

The government estimates the amnesty will boost revenues by Rp165 trillion (US$12.5 billion or 1.3 percent of GDP) in 2016. This would give the administration more flexibility to expand fiscal spending to support the economy without breaching its legal deficit ceiling of 3.0% of GDP. 

Besides boosting revenues, inflows from the tax amnesty will help to protect Indonesia against external pressures, at a time when global capital flows have been increasingly volatile. The country’s current account deficit narrowed to 2.1% of GDP in 2015 from 3.1% a year earlier, on weak commodity prices.

Arif Gunawan Sulistiyono

Bank Indonesia (BI) is paving a way to empower the obliged donation in Islam (zakat) and Islamic charity (waqf), which has a potential up to Rp 300 trillion (US$ 22.23 billion), into Islamic bonds (sukuk) in a bid to maximize the fund to boost the economy.

BI’s Senior Deputy Governor Mirza Adityaswara said that both Islamic social fund has a huge economical assets but had yet to be financially maximized, thus ended up as lump-sum charity with limited multiplier effects.

“If the waqf asset coordinated well, it may be used as an underlying asset to issue sukuk, which ultimately could be used to finance the Islamic economy activities,” he said to the press on Wednesday in Surabaya.

Therefore, he continued, the Indonesia's central bank prepared an international standard to empower the waqf and the zakat fund, by channeling it for funding the business activity with many multiplier effects especially for the society.

BI’s Deputy Governor Perry Warjiyo added that the central bank has conducted discussion with Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and some Islamic economy experts to issue an international core principle of zakat and waqf.

“The core principle of zakat will be issued next year, while the core principle of waqaf is still in process. Under the new guidance, we may attach those social financing to the Islamic banking as the zakat management is closely related to the sharia-based banking,” he said.

At the moment, he continued, Indonesia has several zakat fund collectors with their own standards. Under the core principle, which would be the international best practice for zakat management, they would be rated in terms of the collection, transparency, distribution, including the risk mitigation.

Under the new standard, the zakat fund collection and distribution would closely involve the Islamic banking system and might be effectively used to empower the society, not ended as a lump-sum charity, Perry asserted.

“According to BI’s data, the registered waqf in Indonesia is at least worth Rp 300 trillion, from around Rp2,400 trillion of potential waqf in the country. If we use them as the underlying asset of sukuk, we’ll have huge amount of funds  for big project and small financing,” Perry added.

As for now, he continued, the government has boosted the sukuk market by facilitating the corporations to issue sukuk, beside issuing several sukuks through Finance Ministry to finance the infrastructure project. (Arif Gunawan S.)

One of the biggest conglomerates in Indonesia, Astra International Tbk, has reported lower revenue and lower net profit in the first nine months of 2016, by 8 percent and 17 percent respectively, as its automotive sales dropped by 20 percent.

Based on its latest corporate earnings report, Astra recorded a consolidated net profit of Rp 12 trillion (US$876 million), down 17 percent year-on-year (yoy) from Rp 14.5 trillion in the same period of 2014. Their revenue dropped to Rp 138.18 trillion.

“The challenging business situation that Astra group is facing continues and we predict the performance of all our business lines will not change significantly for the rest of the year,” said president director of Astra International Prijono Sugiarto in a press statement on Thursday.

Astra, particularly known for its domination in Indonesia’s automotive sector, recorded a 20 percent drop in car sales for January-September, down to 382,000 units. This sales performance is worse than the average of the industry  which saw an 18 percent drop in car sales, down to 765,000 units, in the same period.

Thus, the company’s market share of the car-manufacturing industry reduced from 51 percent as of Sept 2014, to 50 percent today. Meanwhile, its market share of the motorcycle industry rose to 68 percent, from 63 percent, despite sales slowing by 20 percent to 4.8 million units.

The company, controlled by the Hong Kong-based Jardine Matheson Group, found all of its seven subsidiaries recording slower growth in net profit, except for mining and heavy-duty machinery business which grew 15 percent in net profit to Rp 3.34 trillion.

“United Tractors, which 59.5 percent of the shares controlled by the company, recorded a 6 percent decline in revenue but its net profit rose 17 percent to Rp 5.6 trillion, thanks to the depreciated rupiah. It earned some of its revenue in US dollars, and had assets in US dollars,” Prijono explained.

In contrast, the net profit in the Astra’s agribusiness line dropped 92 percent, from Rp 1.5 trillion in January-September 2014 to only Rp 116 billion ar the same period. Infrastructure business followed with a 64 percent drop in net profit, to Rp 91 billion.

The automotive business reported a 10 percent drop in its Jan-Sept 2015 net profit to Rp 5.3 trillion. “In general, the low automotive demand in the first nine months of 2015 caused by the slowing economy. The price discount in car-market due to production overcapacity gives negative effect to our net profit,” Prijono said. (bbn/dan)

Ayomi Amindoni & Arif Gunawan Sulistiyono

The government has released the awaited 13th economic policy package on Wednesday, set to provide mass-scale affordable housing for the low-income people with simplified procedures.

Coordinating economic Minister Darmin Nasution said only 78.7 percent of families in Indonesia owned house, including 31 million families who have more than one houses. Ironically, 11.8 million families were yet to have a house and forced to be lessee for life.

“Meanwhile, the developers are reluctant to develop affordable houses for them, therefore the government must make a breakthrough to provide housings for the low income people in a 5 hectares residential complex each,” he said in the press conference in Jakarta.

Currently, developers must pass through 33 permits before working on the project and takes 769 to 981 days to complete, leading to high cost. “Thus, we will simplify them to lower the cost […] and improving business climate in affordable houses [development],” Darmin said.

The government is drafting regulation government (PP) and soon to be conveyed to the President for signature. The new measure will revoke unnecessary permits and issue recommendation to build housings for low level income people

“We will deregulate the 33 permits, cut them into 11 permits. The 981 days processing time will be reduced into 44 days,” Darmin said. (ags)

Concerns over trade protectionism brought up in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Spring Meetings has struck an anticlimax ending, as the Fund even declined to mention the ‘protectionism’ word in its joint-statement on Saturday.

The IMF Committee (IMFC), the steering body of the Fund, vowed to join effort to reduce global imbalances, but revoked their past pledge to resist all forms of protectionism—that has been growing especially among advanced countries such as the United States (US) with its ‘America first’ slogan.

The 1,886 -word communique, which concluded the IMF’s 35th Spring Meetings, preferred to repeat its past commitment on currency exchange rates. It is a direct blow to China that has been repeatedly accused — especially by the US — of devaluing its Yuan to jack up export competitiveness.

“We will refrain from competitive devaluations and will not target our exchange rates for competitive purposes. We will also work together to reduce excessive global imbalances by pursuing appropriate policies. We are working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies,” the IMFC said in a statement on Saturday.

It is a significant step back as the IMF managing director Christine Lagarde in her first statement to the press on Wednesday openly expressed concern over the issue, and pledged to optimize the meeting to find a better solution.

“IMF is not a trade organization. But we are concerned about trade as it has been a major engine of growth, one of pillars of prosperity. We're certainly looking for on how we can participate in that [...] how it can be done in the most efficient, fair way, and no protectionist measure going forward,” she said.

According to the IMF’s data, the number of violation against the principle of multilateral free trade commitment had increased steadily from 2 percent, to 6.5 percent. From G-20 countries alone, there were 3,000 non-compliance trades since 2008.

“How is that to improve it? We believe, in this institution, in the value of dialogue. We will contribute our part. It is our mission in order to make sure that we are not to jeopardize the engine growth, which is the evidence of key component of productivity,” Christine said.

Lagarde’s early comment reflected many countries’ hope to see specific conclusion on protectionism. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati in her previous statement in Jakarta —before she headed to Washington — expected to see the IMF to address the issue.

During the United States Indonesia Society (USINDO) forum on the sidelines of the Spring Meetings on Thursday, Sri Mulyani blatantly criticized the US’ executive orders which put Indonesia in its trade hit list.

It’s a wrong measure because the US has seen trade deficits against 101 countries, meaning that the US’ trade problems are not necessarily sourced from the 16 countries it is aiming for trade-probe, she said.

Rhetoric raised by global economic leaders in the Spring Meetings varied, but mostly refuted the protectionist views. China is the most vocal among them, pointing the anti-globalization issue in the very first paragraph of its statement.

“Political and policy uncertainties, and the rising anti-globalization and protectionism sentiment against international trade and investment, pose challenges to global growth,” wrote the People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan.

All members, he continued, should continue to advocate multilateral cooperation, strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination, and prevent and address spillover effects. It is especially important to enhance the multilateral system of open and free trade and investment, jointly resist protectionism, and accelerate the liberalization of global trade and investment.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that his country committed to keep the global economy open, resisted protectionism and kept global economic and financial cooperation on track. “There is evidently a need to better communicate the benefits of trade and globalization,” he wrote in his statement to the IMFC.

Meanwhile, the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin did not refer to resisting protectionism. Under Trump’s administration, the world largest economy is trying to suck up the juice of free trade to enhance its economy.

Instead, Mnuchin said that the US would continue to promote an expansion of trade with those partners committed to market-based competition, while “more rigorously defending themselves against unfair trade practices.”

During the conclusion of the meeting on Saturday, Bank of Mexico governor Agustin Carstens, who heads the IMF’s steering committee, said protectionism was a “relative term” and “ambiguous” as, according to him, there is no country that does not have any provisions on trade.

“I think everybody is in line that we need free and fair trade, and I think that is what is really reflected in the communique. There was very strong consensus that we should strengthen contribution of trade to our economies,” he claimed.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is optimistic that the US recent executive orders putting Indonesia in its trade-probe hit list will not harm the whole trade relationship between the two countries, calling it as not a “very compelling charge.”

IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld said the US would remain reliant to Indonesia for several goods, such as palm oil, as the world’s largest economy could not produce those goods locally in a massive scale.

“At some level […] trade is helpful for productivity as it allows specialization of production among countries. Indonesia is actually a deficit country itself, so I don’t see any charge [by the US] against Indonesia as being a very compelling charge,” he said to Indonesian journalist on the sidelines of IMF’s Spring Meetings on Thursday.

The US president Donald Trump had ordered a crackdown on “foreign importers that cheat” by signing two executive orders on March 31. Indonesia was in the 15th position on the list, with US$13 billion in trade surplus over the US, followed by Canada with $11 billion surplus.

China was in first with a $347 billion surplus followed by Japan, Germany, Mexico, Ireland, Vietnam, Italy, South Korea, Malaysia, India, Thailand, France, Switzerland and Taiwan.

However, IMF’s division chief for the Asia and Pacific department Luis Enrique Breuer said that the Fund did not see Trump’s measure as a downside risk to Indonesia’s growth, which it has estimated to reach 5.1 percent this year, as it had yet to be materialized.

“I think that the US policy is still being developed. It’s hard to give direct answer to something that's not there yet. I mean, we are not aware of the US following any specific policy with regard to Indonesia,” he said.

As for this year, he highlighted that the foundation of Indonesia’s growth was quite strong despite of the downside risks such as the sudden increase in the US Fed Fund Rate that may lead to currency volatility.

Maurice acknowledged that there has been increasing trend of trade protection, as the IMF’s data showed that there was a significant number of new protection measures that had been applied to 6.5 percent of merchandise imports.

“There is some conflicts between ‘talking the talk’ and ‘walking the walk’ on global integration since 2008 crisis. There has been uptick in protection measure, taking G20 for example. Taking it as a whole, new protection applied 6.5 percent of their merchandise imports. That is significant,” he said.

The IMF expected the trend would be reversed as the global economy was now moving into a better environment with higher growth. While he did not cite the US specifically, Maurice called for countries under trade dispute to file the case to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

“It really is injurious. It is important that trade dispute be handled through WTO process because they are there to protect everyone, prevent a sort of war each-against-all in the international arena,” he said.

However, as the political climate in the country was not pushing in that direction, the IMF forecast that shifting back the trend to the right track would be challenge in the future. “We at the Fund are talking about the importance of not only keeping trade barrier low, but also improve the distribution of gain and trade, making sure that no one left behind,” Maurice said.

All in all, the Fund was still optimistic that Indonesia would be doing well to achieve a 5.1 percent economic growth this year, and to 5.5 percent in the medium term, on the back of strong macroeconomic policy stance and sound fiscal reforms.

Maurice recommended the government to keep broadening its tax base, improve the business climate into a more friendly one for direct investment.

“Indonesia is not a country that we’re worrying about at the moment. It is doing well, that is not to say that there are no risks out there, and it could be vulnerable to protectionism as we discussed […] but the fundamental of the economy is quite great and the government has been pursuing a very constructural reform. They should continue with that,” he concluded.

Anton Hermansyah & Arif Gunawan S.

While the deadline of the tax amnesty bill deliberation is in jeopardy, a polemic has raised on the amount of penalty imposed to the tax evaders. But let us not forget about another important question: where the tax-amnesty inflow will be poured into?

The bill, which aimed to repatriate Indonesian tax payers asset kept abroad, is targeted to be deliberated into law this May, which means only 18 days left to do that as of the issuance of this article today.

Meanwhile, the polemic in Indonesian media outlets recently were on the amount of the penalty, and tended to neglect another question on how to make the tax evaders’ assets can be used to jack up the economy, instead of creating additional burden to the government.

HSBC Indonesia Head of Global Market Ali Setiawan said the priority of tax amnesty was to send Indonesians’ fund kept in foreign countries back to the country. The larger the asset can be repatriated, the bigger the chance for Indonesia to grab new source of fund for development.

"Then, the key will be in the instruments. We need to provide them with government bonds and municipal bonds that can be used to finance the infrastructure, or to deposit them in the banks," he said.

However, the process is actually easier said than done, according to Ali. Without a proper preparation, the inflow—which previously predicted to reach Rp 80 trillion (US$6 billion), could end up as a new burden for the government as it is mostly in foreign currency.

"We have a limited amount of US dollar denominated government bonds, while the corporations are less aggressive in expanding global bond. If they go to the bank, we will see excessive trillion US dollar of third party fund that will be difficult to be channeled in local projects as most of the loans are in rupiah," Ali said.

Tax observer Yustinus Prastowo viewed the repatriation fees in the tax amnesty program is too small and there should be a higher differences between non repatriation and repatriation fees.

Based on the latest publicized draft of the bill, if a taxpayer want to do repatriation he will need to bring the money to Indonesia, pay the repatriation fees, and retain the money for three years. The repatriation fees is one, two, and three percent depends on how late he do the repatriation from the tax amnesty start. If no repatriation (only declaring assets without bring it to Indonesia) the fees will be two, four, and six percent.

"It is too small, it should be five percent for repatriation and ten percent for non repatriation or three and seven percent if has to be smaller," he said.

According to him a big difference will make people to choose repatriation instead just state and keep the assets abroad. However businessman Sofjan Wanandi got different view, the fees should be as low as possible.

"The higher the tariff the lower the repartiated assets come to Indonesia. The important thing is the availability," Sofjan told thejakartapost.com on May 12.

The World Bank has included Indonesia into a list of six countries to be involved in the multi-billion dollar-cost climate change battle, expecting to reduce the world’s emission regardless of the US President Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric against such an issue.

At a press conference before the Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim pointed out that climate change mitigation and adaptation projects would continue to be a priority.

He said Indonesia, China, India, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Vietnam were joined to work on the worlds’ carbon emission reduction programs through multiple efforts which involve the private sector.

“If we can change the incentives and the way that financing for energy works in those six countries, we can potentially have a huge impact on how much carbon we put in the air. We call this our ‘following the carbon’ initiative. We have to make progress in these six countries,” Kim said during the Spring Meetings on Thursday.

Those countries are known to contribute significant coal-based carbon to the atmosphere among the developing countries and emerging economies. However, coal main markets from the advanced economies, such as the US and Australia, are left untouched.

Climate change, which has become one of the World Bank’s main issues to address, has had its most serious opposition in the last decades after Trump helmed the world’s biggest economy with his anti ‘climate change’ rhetoric raised even before he took office.

On Nov. 6, 2012, Trump tweeted: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive."

Once claiming title as the world’s largest carbon emitter—but now the second behind China, the US is the World Bank’s largest shareholder. Trump’s administration has repeatedly said that it could withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate which has now been signed by 143 countries.

However, Kim said the World Bank would not backpedal on its mission as the institution would lose its credibility if the commitment on climate change revoked. He asserted that the Bank had “no interest in destroying particular industries” and the Bank must remain an “evidence-based organization.”

“We’re not changing what we're doing. In fact, we’re doing everything to accelerate it. We’re trying to work on all platforms involving multiple different players who concern about the meeting, to connect each other to make it works,” he said.

Asked about how Trump administration’s denial of climate change and the White House’s refusal to financially contribute to international action on the issue could weaken his effort, Kim said that he was working on new climate financing effort.

“The Green Climate Fund [GCF] is still at around US$7.5 billion after two or three years, and the estimation was that there would be many, many more billions of dollars in that. So we’re using this meeting to bring all of the leaders together to come up with a new plan. We’re going to put on the table a different kind of platform, where all the different groups that are trying to have an impact on climate can work together to put the financing tools together,” he said.

Since July 9, 2015, the World Bank has been accredited as an implementing entity with intermediary functions to the GCF, which is designed to help developing countries finance clean energy, other mitigation efforts and adaptation to climate change.

It has been transferring GCF grants to several projects and clients in the world and blending GCF funds with its own resources or other third party financing.

In the 2017 Spring Meetings, the World Bank held a number of events focused specifically on climate change, featuring climate advocates including former Vice President Al Gore and the UN Environment Program Director Erik Solheim.

Participants in the World Bank-IMF sessions would also discuss means for connecting public and private partnership to combat climate change.

Besides climate change, Kim and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, discussed the need to make sure that the economic growth reaches all sectors of society and will not harm the future generation.

“We need to have equitable growth within countries, across countries and between generations,” said Lagarde.

While the global financial stability is seen improving in the last 6 months, Indonesia must improve buffers and policy mix to counterbalance new downside risks that potentially lead to capital outflow, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said.

The Fund has retained from revising up its estimate for GDP growth in Indonesia this year — despite of its optimism on the global economic momentum, as imminent challenges are seen in the form of fiscal imbalances in the United States (US) and a shift toward protectionism.

IMF’s division chief for the Asia and Pacific department, Luis Enrique Breuer, said the capital flows could be volatile this year, as political and policy uncertainty in advanced economies potentially open new channels for negative spillovers.

“That’s why it is important for the country to protect its policy buffer: keep a good level of international reserves, keep the exchange trade flexible to allow rupiah to move up and down depending on supply and demand consideration, and maintain prudent fiscal and monetary policies,” he said in Washington on Wednesday.

So far, Luis further explained, Bank Indonesia’s (BI) monetary stance was appropriate by leaving the benchmark interest rate unchanged since November. “Again, it’s the right thing to do because of the higher uncertainties in the international financial market,” he said.

As for the right policy mix to address potential external financial volatility, the central bank must work with the government to protect the economic growth and stability, as well as maintaining the inflation rate at a low level.

“The policy mix in the context of Indonesia involves, on the one hand, maintaining a level of fiscal deficit. Last year it was a bit over 2 percent of GDP, which is okay. The other, has to do with monetary policy allowing a flexibility in the exchange rate policy and that is what the authorities have been doing in the last few months,” Luis said.

In its Global Financial Stability report, the fund warned that emerging markets—which include Indonesia—and developing economies remained at risk from a rapid rise in interest rates, US dollar appreciation and lower commodity prices.

“A sudden reversal of market sentiment could reignite capital outflows and hurt economic growth prospects, as could a global shift toward protectionism,” said IMF financial counsellor Tobias Adrian in a press conference.

Those risks could, according to IMF, exacerbate debt vulnerabilities and trigger the materialization of “contingent liabilities, in particular those related to implicit government guarantees on corporate borrowing."

Therefore, Tobias called for the advanced economies, especially the US, to propose policies that aim not only their economic growth but also avoid creating fiscal imbalances and negative global spillovers.

On the other hand, emerging market policymakers should address their external and domestic imbalances. “That includes improving corporate-restructuring mechanisms, monitoring corporate vulnerabilities, and ensuring banks to have healthy buffers,” he explained,

In its 2017 World Economic Outlook, the IMF set its forecast for Southeast Asia’s largest economy at 5.1 percent, unchanged from its earlier estimate made last year, affirming the government’s projection at the same level. It sees Indonesia’s annual growth rate at 5.3 percent in 2018.

“We think that many countries would love to grow by 5 percent. For large countries like Indonesia with GDP that almost [reaches] a trillion dollars, growing 5.1 percent is very fast. Remember we are still living with the legacy from the global financial crisis in the US,” he said.

The growth estimate is maintained even after the US President Donald Trump ordered a probe for potential trade abuse, which make Indonesian businesspeople worry over the potential drop in the future trade surplus with the US.

“We don’t see any bilateral risk that is large in the trade relation between us and Indonesia. We, in IMF, need to see concrete action to evaluate. We can’t speculate on what could happen. We haven’t seen anything concrete [from president Trump’s administration],” Luis said.

Forget the mumbo jumbo speculation on the impact of external effects to Indonesian economy, for this year. The long-boring prediction of Federal Reserve’s rate hike, or the Brexit “terrifying” impact have yet to give any effect to the country.

It is more sensible to examine the economic challenges during the second year of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration through the domestic point of view.

And, one can easily find a clue about what the government is worrying the most in regard to economic performance from the political changes.

The cabinet shakes up in July, which brought back Sri Mulyani Indrawati, and the appointment of duo Ignasius Jonan and Arcandra Tahar in October to helm the energy and natural resources ministry, showed the need for urgent changes in the economic squad to address the fiscal deficit and the current account deficit (CAD) amid the slowdown in the global economy.

After recklessly set a huge tax revenue target for 2016 at Rp 1,54 quadrillion (US$118.27 billion), Jokowi seemed to have understood his mistake and tried to mend it by hiring Sri Mulyani, an economist and then-managing director and chief operating officer at the World Bank, to clean the messes.

Rationalizing the budget posture, by slashing several spending as well as tax revenue target, was the first step she took. The tax revenue target was slashed by Rp 221 trillion, or 14.35 percent to Rp 1,318 trillion, the biggest tax revenue target revision in Indonesian history.

“We acknowledge that the 2016 state budget, apart from having a quite ambitious revenue target, also included additional revenues from the amnesty,” Sri Mulyani said at her first day in office.

Thus, she set a leaner budget for the year ending December 2017 with estimated state expenditures of Rp 2,07 quadrillion and revenues Rp 1,740 trillion. The budget deficit which previously set at 2.15 percent was revised to 2.7 percent.

She also carried out the long-planned tax amnesty program, eyeing Rp 165 trillion in windfall revenue from the penalty. As of Oct, 20 the taxation directorate general has reached 59 percent of the target, worth Rp 97.6 trillion.

Will that be enough? Probably no, if the government sticks with its ambitious growth target of 5.2 percent in 2016. A high economic growth requires a massive consumption and investment, two of which have their light getting dimmer amid global and domestic economic slowdown.

Amid the situation, the source of growth would be from the government. Several delays in infrastructure projects, in which the Rp 300 trillion of the government spending supposed to oil the economy, signaled the need to have other sources of spending aside from infrastructure.

However, Indonesian law requires the budget deficit to be kept below 3 percent of the current gross domestic product. It might hamper the effort to spend more above the state revenue.

At this situation, Sri Mulyani might prepare counter cyclical move as her last call to shape the economy, meaning that she will expand the deficit level above 3 percent. But before she can do that, the country must first lower the CAD, a job that can be assisted by the duo Jonan and Arcandra.

Oil-gas deficit
The repositioning of Jonan and Arcandra who both previously sacked from the cabinet was to address the reform in the energy and mining sector, according to Jokowi and the Coordinating Maritime Minister Luhut B. Pandjaitan.

Which problem that should be reformed first? Executive director Komaidi Notonegoro of Jakarta-based energy research organization ReforMiner Insititute said the upstream industry must get the priority to reform as it was the root of the problem in Indonesian energy dilemma.

While many parties applauded Jokowi’s strong moves in cutting the fuel subsidy and liquidating Pertamina Energi Trading Ltd (Petral) and its subsidiaries, they only improved the energy sector's downstream industry but did not address the upstream industry.

Turning itself into a net oil importer in 2004, when domestic oil output declined sharply amid skyrocketing consumption, Indonesia saw a worsen dependency on oil imports year by year. The huge oil and gas imports, up to 30 percent of the total trade has been hurting the CAD.

In the first quarter of the year, the CAD reached $4.7 billion or 2.14 percent of the GDP, worsening compared to the same period in 2015 which stood at 1.94 percent. The oil and gas recorded a deficit of $0.8 billion.

An analyst at Daewoo Securities Indonesia Christine Natasya said the energy reform could be a solution to tackle the CAD. She urged Jokowi to complete the revision of the Government Regulation Number 79 Year 2010 on cost recovery to attract investment in oil production.

She expects the government to lower the cost recovery by 30 percent for new oil and gas projects that yet to be started. The government has previously planned to lower the cost recovery target to $10.4 billion this year and to further drop it next year.

“Although this means lower tax revenue, we believe it will be paid off in the future such as by narrowing Indonesia’s current account deficit. Currently, Jonan and Arcandra are working on the best possible outcome for investors as well as the government,” she said on Thursday.