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.