JAKARTA (Reuters) – Chinese short video app TikTok remains in violation of Indonesia's rules banning in-app transactions, a minister said on Tuesday after it took control of the country's largest e-commerce platform to restart online shopping operations. He said he is doing so.
TikTok shut down TikTok Shops, a relatively new e-commerce service, after Indonesia banned online shopping on the social media platform last year, citing the need to protect the data of small sellers and users. I was forced to do it.
Indonesian tech conglomerate GoTo announced last month that it had completed a deal agreed in December in which TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance, would acquire a 75.01% stake in Tokopedia for $840 million.
Indonesia's Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Minister Teten Masduki, who had frequently spoken out against TikTok shops even before last year's ban, told reporters that TikTok was still not complying with regulations.
“The trade minister must reprimand TikTok to comply with regulations, but if it doesn't…the authority of the government will be undermined,” he said.
A representative for TikTok in Indonesia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The Ministry of Trade said it was still considering how best to respond to the issue.
TikTok last year announced its intention to invest billions of dollars in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, the region's largest economy.
(Reporting by Bernadette Christina; Writing by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Stephen Coates)