Businessmen to study AFTA strategy

Businessmen to study AFTA strategy

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Dozens of local businessmen started gathering here on Tuesday
to study strategies for the local industrial sector to remain
competitive after Indonesia and other countries grouped in the
Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) start
implementing a free trade scheme in the region in three months
time.

Businessman Aburizal Bakrie, who is also chairman of the
Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), which
organized the two-day conference, said the conference, titled
"The Preparation of the Business Sector for AFTA", was aimed at
examining the preparations by the local industrial sector for the
so-termed AFTA (ASEAN Free Trade Area).

The conference was also aimed at collecting comment from
industry players for the government on measures to help the local
industrial sector to compete during the free trade era.

"We are gathering here to collect any inputs aimed at
empowering our industrial sector in anticipation of AFTA,"
Aburizal said.

He said the conclusion of the meeting would be presented as
inputs and recommendations to the government for empowering the
local industrial sector during the free trade era.

AFTA was agreed upon in 1993, with the implementation of the
free trade scheme initially scheduled for 2008. The free trade
timeframe was later accelerated to 2003.

In a meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam in December 1998, ASEAN
ministers later sped up the deadline to 2002 for six member
countries, namely Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, and Thailand.

These countries have to lower their import tariffs for most of
their manufacturing and agricultural products to between zero
percent and five percent, starting in 2002.

Other less-developed member countries of ASEAN are allowed to
implement AFTA in later years, with Vietnam in 2006, Laos and
Myanmar in 2008, and Cambodia in 2010.