Indonesia's trade ministry plans to tighten imports of Chinese ceramic products

The Trade Minister (Mendag) said he would tighten ceramic imports due to the large number of illegal ceramic products coming in from China.The Ministry of Trade recently confiscated 4.57 million ceramic products, valued at nearly Rp 80 billion, because they did not meet SNI standards.The Trade Minister said that the influx of illegal ceramic imports will hit MSMEs as their price competitiveness will be reduced. Illegally entered Chinese ceramic products are often inexpensive, causing MSMEs to stagnate in the sale of their products, so they will be levying a high excise tax on every imported ceramic product. If the products are imported from abroad, they will be subject to high taxes and also have to comply with the SNI, which hopefully will no longer affect the price of ceramics in Indonesia.

This comes after the Trade Minister destroyed millions of illegally imported ceramic products from China belonging to PT Bintang Timur in Surabaya, valued at Rp 79.8 billion. Millions of ceramics of different brands from China were not accompanied by import documents, including the absence of customs clearance letter (SPP) and goods delivery document or consignment note (CN). On top of that, it has no Indonesian National Standard (SNI) certificate, which is considered unfavorable to consumers. If such imported products are available for a long period of time, local ceramic factories may close down.