Indonesia Customs and Excise to use IBM’s TradeLens platform to improve the speed, accuracy and security of local and international shipping
Jakarta - 18 February 2020 - The Indonesia Customs and Excise Department, which sits under the Ministry of Finance, today announced the use of the blockchain-enabled TradeLens platform in Indonesia. The announcement follows several months of implementation since the department first announced it was joining the TradeLens ecosystem at the end of last year. Indonesia Customs and Excise Department is the third government agency in Southeast Asia to use the platform.
TradeLens is a digital global trade platform that enables more efficient and accurate container tracking and information sharing among platform members. The TradeLens platform, jointly developed by A.P. Moller - Maersk and IBM, digitizes formerly paper-based shipping processes, resulting in instantaneous and immutable end-to-end data.
By replacing formerly paper-based processes, TradeLens will provide the Indonesia Customs and Excise Department with an automatic and immutable tracking tool which will lead to a more secure, transparent, efficient and simpler workflow, with near real-time information sharing from a diverse network of ecosystem members.
The Indonesia Customs and Excise Department is working on expanding the National Logistic Ecosystem (NLE) which will enable both demand and supply sectors of the logistics community to meet and collaborate effectively. Using a system called CEISA 4.0 (Customs Excise Information System and Automation), they plan to expand NLE to bring together importers and exporters to collaborate and share information with logistics providers.
Authorities will now be able to receive shipping data as soon as containers leave the port of origin. This will give the Customs and Excise Department more time to prepare to receive shipments, thereby enabling more efficient and thorough fraud and forgery inspections as well as more consistent and transparent revenue collection processes.
Mr. Agus Sudarmadi, Custom and Excise Director, said, “The customs and excise department aims to leverage the blockchain solution to simplify the exchange of goods, automate documentation and increase co-operation and communication between counterparties. With the Collaboration Application Programing Interface [API] concept, all logistics activities including trucking, warehousing, shipping and freight forwarding at both domestic and global levels can now be brought together and shared through a single platform — TradeLens.”
“The supply chain is an important factor in managing the logistics costs and Indonesian logistics costs are relatively higher compared to other countries in South East Asia. TradeLens will help bring further visibility, predictability and security to us and will be a real asset for trade and transport facilitation, making Indonesia the preferred logistics and transport gateway in this region. It will also enable us to fulfill our mission to facilitate trade and to promote national logistics systems as well as contribute to the development of the national economy while meeting the most up-to-date standards set by the World Customs Organisation (WCO),” added Mr. Sudarmadi.
Tan Wijaya, President Director of IBM Indonesia said “We are proud to acknowledge this collaboration with the Indonesia Customs and Excise Department to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the logistics sector both at domestic and international levels. We believe that TradeLens, and the implementation of blockchain technology in various forms, will benefit all stakeholders in the entire logistics ecosystem and drive the modernization of trade at all levels. We also hope other industries will soon realize the need for blockchain adoption which can help businesses to redefine their relationships in the market through increased trust, transparency and newfound collaboration.”
Erry Hardianto, Managing Director, Indonesia and Philippines, A.P. Moller - Maersk said, "TradeLens brings transparency and digitalisation of trade to a whole new level. This is a prominent example of how technology helps improve efficiency in a sector that has been managing in a very traditional way in most parts of the world. I am very delighted that Indonesia Customs and Excise Department is pioneering this change by collaborating with IBM and Maersk in bringing TradeLens to Indonesia. And I am equally confident that the customs and excise department will become an agent of change, taking efficiency and transparency of trade to a new level in Indonesia."
More than $16 trillion USD worth of goods is shipped across international borders each year, with some 80 percent transported by the ocean shipping industry. Paper-based procedures cause a number of pain points felt throughout the global supply chain, including inconsistent and inaccurate information, delays and disruptions (due to manual checking and data input), the inability to provide thorough risk assessments, the promotion of complex, inefficient and costly stakeholder communication, and a lack of transparency.
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