Interest In Asset Repatriation High : Kadin Chairman

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - Chairman of the influential Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) Rosan Roeslani said interest is high among the business people in repatriating their funds from abroad under the tax amnesty program of the government.

"To be frank, many Indonesian business people want to bring home their assets  from abroad," Rosan said here on Tuesday.

However, it is not easy for them to bring back their assets to Indonesia and could not be done immediately, as most of the assets are not in liquid fund but mostly in investment, he said.

"We could not expect them to be able to return their assets tomorrow. It would take time, such as in the case of securities that we have to sell first.

"Another problem is that first period of the program with redemption tariff of 2 percent would end by the end  in three days," he said.

The redemption tariff is only 2 percent in the first period   of the tax amnesty program to end on Sept 30 , but the tariff would be raised to 3 percent in the second period starting October 1 until end of this year  and to 5 percent in the third or last period from January 1 to March 31.

Rosan  said Kadin started taking part in the program only on Tuesday as it would need time for consolidation of companies.

"Consolidation of companies is not easy. Honestly, a businessman could have not only one companies but tens, hundreds , even there are ones having more than a thousand companies," he said.

He said the business people  especially Kadin, are set to bring to success the tax amnesty program and rbi9ng home their assets from abroad.

Coordinating Minister for Economy Darmin Nasution said earlier said the revenues in redemption before  the end of the first period is as projected , although still far from the target of of Rp165 trillion  by the end of this year.

Therefore, Darmin expressed optimism that the program would run more effectively until the end of the program in March 2017.

On Wednesday, the government said on Sept 27 the redemption increased by more than  Rp10 trillion  from Rp62 trillion on Sept 26  this year.

Among the benefits offered to those taking part in the tax amnesty program include abolition of tax not paid in the past, no tax administrative sanction and criminal sanction and the data would not be used for legal investigation .

The program would end in March 2017, after the deadline, failure to pay tax or tax evasion would be legally charged.

The government has warned that in 2018, there would be no way for tax payers to hide assets to evade paying taxes  as Indonesia would take part in international system of transparency. (WDY)