Singapore not to hamper Indonesians from repatriating assets: Indonesian FinMin

Singapore has given assurance that Indonesians, who have assets in the city-state and plan to join Jakarta's tax amnesty program, will not be investigated for suspicious acts, the Indonesian finance minister said on Friday.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati made the remarks after Indonesian taxpayers voiced concern that the government of Singapore will report them as criminals should they join the Indonesia's tax relaxation program.

The minister said she has already contacted Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Taman Shanmugaratnam and the monetary authority of Singapore, saying that such information is not valid.

The government of Singapore plans to facilitate and will not hamper Indonesians from participating in the tax amnesty program, Sri Mulyani said.

"Because this is a very serious matter, I checked it directly to the government of Singapore. It was stressed that Indonesians who have assets in Singapore and is planning to join tax amnesty program, are not considered as suspicious transactions. So it is not an illegal act," she said.

Indonesia launched the tax amnesty program in July in an effort to repatriate a huge asset parked overseas and encourage tax payers at domestic to declare assets.

Most of Indonesians' funds are parked in Singapore private banks with a total amount of about 200 billions U.S. dollars, or 40 percent of the nation's private banking assets.

The asset repatriation is aimed in part at financing the government's deficit in development budget following shortages on tax revenues.

A total of 22.7 trillion rupiah (some 2.3 billion U.S. dollars) of tax amnesty revenue has been collected as of Friday or 14 percent of the target of 165 trillion rupiah (about 16.5 billion U.S. dollars). Endit