Liputan6.com, Jakarta Weakened rupiah against US dollar has carried with it some negative repercussions to scores of national sectors. Businesses are inevitably threatened, with some that establish reliance on imported materials suffer the most.
Indonesia is populated by individuals who rely heavily on cigarettes with nearly 70% reportedly smoke, have smoked or are exposed to it. It is not a surprise then to see popular outcry rejecting increased tax on industrially-made tobacco products following dollar's rate hike.
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The Indonesian government has been insisted to reconsider increasing tax on this particular area, because cigarettes have become part of people's lives and when attaining that part requires extra fund, their discontentment can be vented in any kind of form thereby causing gradual social upheaval. Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) researcher, Ennt Sri Hartati warns both Fiscal Policy Agency (BKF) and Finance Ministry to carefully weigh the impacts of such decision before taking any chance of issuing it.
Normally, an increase of tax with no law enforcement yielded by the government would make drastic impacts largely unavoidable. The most sensitive sector where increased tax is greatly felt is the employment or manpower sector. There have been many evidence supporting the notion of increased tax being one of the primary impetuses creating unemployment.
"Increased of tax will ultimately open up opportunities for illegal tobacco products, to come and play with its industry and the government suffer the most loss," Enny said, Wednesday (26/8/2015).
According to her, it is best for the government to reconsider burdening tobacco industry by placing higher tax and focus more developing a grand design to protect small tobacco industries from the possibility of bankruptcy. (Akp/tnt)
