Saturday, September 10, 2011

Imported Film Monopoly

Since the late President Soeharto stepped down from power on May 1998, Indonesia has been forced by foreign creditors especially the IMF to adopt a liberal economy and prohibit business monopoly.

As a result, state owned companies that used to have monopoly on the sales of their products must allow other companies to compete with them in the business.

State owned companies like sole distributor of petroleum PT Pertamina must allow Shell, Total and, Petronas to sell their products directly to the consumers.

However, there is one business which is still monopolized by one business group i.e import and circulation of Hollywood film, which is done by by the Group-21 as owner of 570 out of the 676 screens in theaters all over Indonesia.

According to Associated Press, Hollywood film producers fully supported the Group-21, this can be seen from the fact  that when the government imposed import duty on films, film makers like Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Century Fox Film, Universal Pictures and others stopped sending their films last February.

Even after the government revised the import duty regulation last June, Hollywood producers were reluctant to send films because Group-21 was challenging more than US$ 30 million unpaid levies and other penalties in Court. They only want to start sending the films again to Omega Film which is related to the Group-21.

Several weeks ago, the Customs office temporarily halt Omega Film's  import license because there were allegations that it is related to Group-21.

Those Hollywood film producers cannot  have their own distribution company here like in other countries because our investment law does not allow foreigner to invest on this kind of business.

I hope that the government and the fair business competition commission would seriously investigate the allegations that Group-21 have been monopolizing the import of films.
I also hope that film businessmen in Indonesia would import more films from Europe and Asia.

10 comments:

ASPeMusik said...

saya baru tahu monopoli film dari artikel ini.
terimakasih sudah berbagi

smp 3 lembang said...

kalau nonton film indonesia saja rasanya jenuh kebanyakan film genre horror dan vulgar, semoga film hollywood bisa lancar lagi masuk ke Indonesia

triesti said...

Hear hear about more european movies. My questions are: why hollywood support 21 so much? what do they have that others done? sure they have cinemas but if they are not allowed to import any movies because their own fault by not paying tax sooner of later they got nothing much to show accept for indonesian movies. Would hollywood rather see people buying pirated VCD than going to the cinema?

colson said...

I do very much agree with you and can't but echo triesti; hopefully the number of Asian, European ( and South American as well as African but also independent US) films in Indonesian cinema theatres will increase considerably.

Mr. Nya' said...

monopoli ? saya ingat sejarahnya VOC di jaman Belanda, selalu berdampak pada kesengsaraan, karena ketidakadilan selalu ikut bersamanya

r10 said...

saya juga kecewa dengan monopoli film, yg paling dirugikan adalah pemilik bioskop non-21

Unknown said...

@ASPeMusik,
Begitulah kondisi perfileman import.

@Smp3Lembang,
Mudah2an demikian nantinya.

@Triesti,
Maybe the Hollywood film producers are very happy dealing with "21" so they don't want anybody else.

@Colson,
I would be very happy to see much more films from France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Russia, etc.

@Mr Nyariadi,
Saya setuju dengan anda, monopoli lebih banyak negatifnya.

@R10,
Anda benar, semoga keadaannya membaik.

Fahrizi Noer Fajar Azman said...

Film dari indonesia banyak yang kurang bagus. walau banyak juga yang bagus nya. tapi malahan film luar juga kadang suka di selipkan adegan yang kurang bagus...

hmm...

Unknown said...

@Fahrizi,
Saya sependapat dengan anda, film kita maupun import ada baik dan buruknya. Sekarang bagaimana supaya kita mempelajari kelebihan film import agar mutu film kita menjadi lebih baik.

Ria Tumimomor said...

Dulu waktu Blitz pertama kali ada di Jakarta, pikiran sih mereka bakal banyak muter film Eropa dan Asia... Tp ternyata gak juga :(