Jakarta, 18 February 2020 – IBM Indonesia together with A.P. Moller – Maersk and The Indonesia Customs and Excise Department, which sits under the Ministry of Finance, today announce their pilot collaboration to use blockchain enabled ‘TradeLens’ platform in Indonesia after several months of its first implementation phase announced 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, digitalizes formerly paper-based shipping processes, resulting in instantaneous and immutable end-to-end data.

By digitalizing shipping processes – formerly paper-based processes – TradeLens will provide the Indonesia Customs and Excise Department 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 logistic 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 logistic 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, Director of Customs and Excise Information 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 logistic activities including trucking, warehousing, shipping and freight forwarding at both domestic and global levels can now be brought together and sharing of information through a single platform – the IBM TradeLens.”

“The supply chain is an important factor in managing the logistic costs and Indonesia logistics costs are relatively higher compare 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 most up-to-date standards set by the World Customs Organisation (WCO),” added Mr. Agus 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 logistic 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 industry will soon realize the need of Blockchain adoption which can help businesses to redefine their relationships in the market through increase trust, transparency, and newfound collaboration.”

“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,” said Erry Hardianto, Managing Director, Indonesia and Philippines, A.P. Moller – Maersk.

More than $16 trillion USD worth of goods are 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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Directorate General of Customs and Excise

Directorate General of Customs and Excise (DGCE) in its role for Indonesia within its duties and functions to: (1) protect the community from the import of dangerous goods; (2) protect particular domestic industries from unfair competition with similar foreign industries; (3) carry out law enforcement at the borders related with restriction and prohibition regulation; (4) collect import duty and taxes for state revenue.

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