E-commerce company Lazada Indonesia has officially closed the import taps of three cross-border trade clusters from abroad to Indonesia. The three are the textile and fashion, food, and handicraft clusters.

Lazada Indonesia's Head of Public Affairs and Public Policy Waizly Darwin stated that the import closure was based on a review of company policies related to cross-border sales.

Although he did not specify what studies he meant, he emphasized that the three clusters were relevant to the government's import substitution program.

"The three national industrial clusters are important sectors for us to talk about saving the national economy," he said.

Furthermore, he also stated that the closure meant that the practice of selling between foreign businesses to customers in Indonesia through Lazada was no longer allowed.

Waizly said that the seller's accounts in the three clusters would be closed by Lazada. However, he could not specify how many sellers would be affected by the new policy.

"Judging from our practice or policy intercept against cross-border sellers, of course we will immediately close B2C sellers, from abroad selling directly to Indonesia," he explained.

On the same occasion, Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Teten Masduki stated that Lazada's policy was the result of negotiations carried out by the government to protect local MSME actors.

Despite closing access to outside sellers, Teten stated that this does not mean that Indonesia has a closed trade policy.

According to him, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) wants only products that cannot be made by Indonesian MSMEs that can be traded cross-border through e-commerce.

"Essentially, the President asked that if the nation's MSMEs are able to make fried chicken, what about importing fried chicken? It doesn't mean we have a closed economy, but there are many products that cannot be made by Indonesia that need to be imported. I think that's fair," he concluded.