MAKASSAR – The Makassar City Government will once again establish its existence on the world stage.
Through the Regional Revenue Agency (Bapenda), Makassar City is the only city in Indonesia that is invited by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to take part in the Regional Workshop on Strengthening Property Tax Management in Increasing Regional Original Income in Takaoka and Tokyo, Japan.
Taking place for five days from 4–8 September 2023, this activity will be attended by ten countries.
They are Armenia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kyrgyz Republic, Laos, Nepal, Philippines, China, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
Not only being a participant, the Head of Makassar City Bapenda Firman Hamid Pagarra is also given the opportunity to be a speaker on the second day.
Representing Indonesia, Firman Pagarra will appear with three other speakers.
Among them will be Paul Bidanset, ADB International Property Tax Management (IT Systems) Consultant.
There will also be Sirinun Maikong as Economist, Tax Policy Bureau, Fiscal Policy Office of the Thai Ministry of Finance, and Stephane Gil as ADB International Property Tax Consultant.
“Alhamdulillah, Bapenda is an important part of this workshop. We are invited to be participants as well as speakers at the taxation workshop to be held in Tokyo,” said Firman Hamid Pagarra, Wednesday (30/8).
Firman explained that the purpose of this workshop is to increase institutional capacity in property tax management. Specifically, there are two in Bapenda, namely PBB and BPHTB.
“So our goal was to find out how Makassar City has become one of the cities in Indonesia in terms of city resilience related to taxation, especially PBB and BPHTB,” he said.
As the representative of Indonesia, Makassar Bapenda will be accompanied by the Director of Regional Revenue of the Ministry of Home Affairs Hendriwan Imron and Regional Tax Analyst of the Ministry of Home Affairs Mirni Sumiyati.
“There will be 23 workshop participants from ten countries, and there will be only three of us from Indonesia,” he added.
It is an honor for Firman to be able to represent Indonesia in the taxation workshop organized by ADB.
The plan is that Firman will explain the achievements of the Pakinta (Integrated and Digitized Tax) application which has been implemented since 2022.
“We will explain how using the Pakinta application can increase the target income. Many people are helped and pay directly through the application compared to previous years, when they had to come to the office,” he explained.
This success is proven by the large number of users registered in the Pakinta application innovated by Makassar City Bapenda.
In fact, PBB revenue has even increased from IDR 180 billion in 2021 to IDR 213 billion in 2022.
“We will also present the PBB mapping that we did last year. We have maps of potential in two sub-districts, Manggala and Tamalate. And, Alhamdulillah, there has been an increase in the number of Tax Object Numbers (NOP),” he concluded.
