TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises or SMEs Ministry demanded e-commerce platforms take down merchants listing imported used clothes. Thus, the keyword "baju bekas” or secondhand used apparel is no longer found in their search results.

“We hope that there will be no more [keyword] of 'used clothes' next week that we can still easily find them,” said the ministry’s Deputy for SMEs, Hanung Harimba Rachman, during a discussion with e-commerce players at the ministry office, on Thursday, March 16.

Hanung emphasized that the ban on the import of secondhand clothes has been regulated in the Trade Minister’s Regulation No. 51/M-DAG/PER/7/2015 and the Trade Minister’s Regulation No. 40 of 2022 concerning the amendments to the Trade Minister’s Regulation No. 18 of 2021 on goods prohibited from being imported and exported.

He mentioned that as stated in Article 2 (3), goods prohibited from being imported include used bags, used sacks, and used clothes. “Because thrifting clearly has a lot of negative impacts on local MSMEs and has an impact on the environment,” Hanung said.

Deputy Chief of the Indonesia E-Commerce Association (idEA) Budi Primawan said his side is ready to support the government's policy. This, he underlined, is the commitment of platform owners. However, each platform has its own system.

“Regarding the issue of thrifting and imported used clothes, there are indeed a number of sellers conducting cross-border sales. We ensure that there is control and monitoring for this type of seller,” said Budi.

RIRI RAHAYU

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