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“The increase has already been approved by the finance ministry and the text is now with the ministry of justice,” Irvan Kamal Hakim, the former president director of Indonesia’s state-run steelmaker Krakatau Steel, told Steel First on Monday May 25.
“It should be officially announced anytime soon,” he said on the sidelines of the 2015 South East Asian Iron & Steel Institute (Seaisi) conference in Manila, in the Philippines.
The country’s industry ministry had, last month, submitted a proposal to the finance ministry seeking an increase of import duties on dozens of finished steel products to a minimum of 15%. The current duties on them mainly range from zero to 12.5%.
“We understand that duties will be 15% for products like hot rolled coil, but for upstream products, they will be higher,” Hakim said.
Market participants, however, are yet to be updated on the full list of duties, he noted.
A senior official at the Indonesian Iron & Steel Industry Assn (IISIA) previously told Steel First that the duty increase would mainly affect carbon flat steel such as HRC, cold rolled coil and coated goods.
Raising import duties figured among ten measures that Krakatau Steel had sought the Indonesian government to implement amid an “invasion” of steel imports that hit its operational and financial results in 2014.
Hakim is now the president commissioner of Krakatau Industrial Estate Cilegon, a Krakatau Steel subsidiary that deals in real estate in Indonesia, following a recent management reshuffle.
He is also chairman of the IISIA.
