Indonesia Reassures Commodity Exporters Over Single-Intermediary Digital Export Overhaul Starting Jan. 1

JAKARTA, Investortrust.id — The Indonesian government has moved to reassure national commodity exporters that imminent trade rule revisions will not disrupt core commercial negotiations or inflate administrative overhead, even as state-backed entity PT DSI prepares to assume its role as a single intermediary on Jan. 1.

The procedural clarifications come as the government finalizes an evaluation driving revisions to Government Regulation (PP) No. 24/2026 on natural resource export proceeds (DHE SDA). By clarifying the operational pipeline, economic ministries are attempting to soothe business concerns that centralizing commodity routing through a single entity will stifle commercial execution or complicate longstanding compliance requirements across key sectors like coal and palm oil.

Trade Minister Budi Santoso emphasized that commercial bargaining and contracting between local producers and international buyers will continue as normal.

“Ladies and gentlemen as exporters will continue activities just as you do now,” Budi said during a virtual briefing on the implementation of natural resource export proceeds on Friday. “When negotiating transactions with buyers, the interaction between exporters and buyers remains the same, unchanged. Therefore, export procedures also do not change.”

Preserving Existing Sector Obligations

Budi noted that established regulatory benchmarks remain intact and must be satisfied directly by businesses. Exporters of crude palm oil (CPO) remain strictly obligated to fulfill the Domestic Market Obligation (DMO), coal miners must maintain an approved Work Plan and Budget (RKAB), and ferroalloy producers must secure Surveyor Reports (LS) under existing laws.

The trade minister stressed that fulfilling DMO mandates remains entirely the responsibility of exporters rather than being absorbed by PT DSI.

To synchronize administrative systems, the Ministry of Trade will adjust Trade Minister Regulations (Permendag) No. 15, 16, and 17. Exporters whose Registered Exporter (ET) licenses were approved before June 1 will receive automatic extensions matching their remaining three-year validity terms. Companies that registered between June 1 and Dec. 31 will be required to re-register.

Digital Clearance and Customs Integration

Budi stated that the only structural addition to the existing framework is a automated clearance phase once standard trade ministry permits are issued.

“So in reality, there is no change at all,” Budi said. “What changes, or what will be added later, is that after the licensing is completed, after all permits from the Ministry of Trade are settled, ladies and gentlemen will undergo a clearance process conducted by DSI. It will be conducted by DSI by system. So, the addition is strictly that. Everything else has not changed at all, meaning it aligns with the previous regulation.”

The Ministry of Finance reiterated that integrating the new PT DSI portal with the automated customs clearance system (CEISA) and the Indonesian National Single Window (SINSW) will not burden businesses with extra operational steps or charges.

“We are in a position to support the implementation of PT DSI, and in truth, from the exporter side, there will not be many differences,” Deputy Finance Minister Nurkholisoh Ibnu Aman said during the joint briefing. “We continue to operate the Ceisa customs system that we are all familiar with. It is just that this time, before documents are submitted to Ceisa, there is a portal prepared by PT DSI before those documents are forwarded to Ceisa.”

Under the revised architecture, export documentation is initially uploaded into the PT DSI platform, which then automatically routes the files into CEISA. Once the data enters CEISA, standard customs processing proceeds without manual intervention.

“Subsequently, all processes continue to run normally, so there are no extra activities or costs for exporters,” Nurkholisoh said.

The Directorate General of Customs and Excise (DJBC) has conducted technical assessments and end-to-end integration tests between the PT DSI portal and CEISA to ensure server capacity and data processing reliability remain robust ahead of the mandatory rollout on Jan. 1.