Jakarta (ANTARA News) - House Commission IV legislators in charge of agriculture and food called on the government here on Tuesday to tighten control over meat and entrails imports.
"Commission IV has received many complaints on the imports of meat using innards import documents," Azwar Chesputra of the Golkar Party faction of the House of Representatives (DPR) said.
Mindo Sianipar of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) faction also made the same call, urging the government to prevent manipulations of meat and entrails import documents.
According to Azwar, a cartel, which consists of four or five companies, among others, PT Anzindo, PT Sumber Laut Perkasa, PT Indogama and PT Bumi Mastro Ayu, is now taking control of the meat imports in the country.
He said the fact they control meat imports also enables them to manipulate the documents easily.
Azwar said the allegation that meat imports had entered the country using innards import documents was true.
When the Commission IV members conducted an impromptu visit to the container terminal at Tanjung Priok seaport on Monday, they found illegal meat imports.
The impromptu visit was made by at least ten Commission IV members from different political party factions. They included Bomer Pasaribu of the Golkar Party, Azwar Chesputra, Hifnie Syarkawi of the United Development Party, Sudjud Surajudin of the National Mandate Party, Umung Anwar Sanusi of the Prosperous Justice Party and Gde Sumarjaya Linggih of the Golkar Party.
The visit was led by Commission IV Deputy Chairmen Mindo Sianipar of the PDI-P and Suswono of the Prosperous Justice Party.
Mindo said that the meat importers deliberately used entrails documents to avoid paying more import duties.
The government imposed a five percent import duty of the sales values on both meat and innards imports.
But because the price of meat was higher than that of entrails, the importers would gain more profits if they used innards documents for their meat imports.
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