Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang
The Tangerang regency legislative council will soon approve a bylaw which will pave the way for the regency to collect fees from passengers at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
The fee will be collected at Terminal 2, which is located in the regency's jurisdiction.
About 340 out the total 2,600 hectares of the airport area is located in Rawa Rengas, Rawa Burung, Belimbing and Jatimulya subdistricts in Kosambi district, in the northern part of Tangerang regency.
"We will soon approve the transportation bylaw which will function as the administration's legal umbrella to collect fees from passenger taxes," Council speaker Endang Sudjana said Saturday.
He said the fee would be collected along with the airport tax. It means that when passengers pay the airport tax, they will also pay a fee to the regency.
However, the council has yet to decide how much each passenger will be charged.
"The fee may be 10 percent of airport taxes for domestic and international flights. For example, if the domestic tax is Rp 25,000, each passenger will pay Rp 2,500. For international flights, the fee may be Rp 5,000," he said.
The administration has long prepared plans to collect fees at the airport. A decision to create the bylaw became firmer after the council's Commission C conducted a comparative study in several other regions across the country.
"We found that most of other regional administrations obtain revenue from air transportation activities and we have yet to do so. The airport has been operating a long time and we have only been collecting taxes on the land and the buildings."
According to the council speaker, with the implementation of the regional autonomy law, the regency should also be obtaining revenue from several other sources of levies at the airport such as advertising and parking taxes.
"We will propose the revenue collection from passengers first. Later we will consider other sources which are under the regency's authority and we are sure that airport operator PT Angkasa Pura II will listen to our wishes," he added.
The council said this bylaw was expected to be approved by the end of the month.
PT Angkasa Pura II spokesman Trisno Heryadi refused to comment on the regency's plan to ask for fees through one of the company's airports. He said the issue was a matter for the administration.
He said he was aware that outside Soekarno-Hatta airport, regional administrations had installed counters to collect money from air passengers.
"We do need to clarify that we (the company) collect no tax from passengers. Only the government does so," he told The Jakarta Post.
According to Trisno, the term "airport tax" is actually a service charge that airport operators collect from air passengers at every airport. The money is used for cost recovery and for the maintenance of the public facility, he said.
PT Angkasa Pura II manages 12 airports in Jakarta, West Java and Sumatra.
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