JAKARTA, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia has applied import tariffs on tiles and ceramics from India and Vietnam to protect the domestic industries, following the surge of shipments of the products from the two nations, a senior official said on Friday.
India and Vietnam have been exempted from the Indonesian list of nations receiving safeguards import duty (locally known as BMTP), Head of the Fiscal Policy of the Finance Ministry Febrio Kacaribu said.
"The government has been committed to supporting the domestic industries, particularly the industries of tiles and ceramics, to make them capable of competing with imported products which have surged recently," he said.
Shipments of tiles and ceramics from India and Vietnam jumped 22.72 percent and 6.58 percent from 2018 to 2019 respectively, according to data from the finance ministry.
Based on the World Trade Organization Agreement on Safeguards' article 9.1, Indonesia is allowed to impose import duties on the products imported from India and Vietnam, as market shares of the products in Indonesia have exceeded 3 percent of the threshold, Kacaribu said in a statement.
The Southeast Asian biggest economy has been striving to ramp up the manufacturing industry as it aims at gradually reducing reliance on exports of natural resources commodities. Enditem
