Govt urged to appoint ambassador to WTO
Govt urged to appoint ambassador to WTO
JAKARTA (JP): Econit, an industry, trade and economics
advisory group, urged the government yesterday to appoint an
ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
"It is high time for Indonesia, as a signatory of the WTO and
chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, to play an active role in
the implementation of the multilateral trade approach adopted by
the Marrakesh pact of the organization," the managing director of
Econit, Rizal Ramli, said yesterday.
WTO, a multilateral trade body adopted by a ministerial
meeting last year in Marrakesh, Morocco, was inaugurated on Jan.
1, 1995, to replace the 46-year-old General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade.
Econit stipulated that the ambassador should be competent in
international trade and diplomacy because current international
trade disputes involve sophisticated "art of bullying"
strategies.
"The ambassador to WTO must possess knowledge of international
trade, have technical experience of world trade and international
lobbies and networks," Ramli insisted.
According to Ramli, Indonesia's WTO representative must be at
ambassadorial level, and not a trade attache.
The establishment of the WTO is expected to help increase
international trade with a 40 percent reduction in import
duties on industrial products and a 37 percent reduction on
agricultural goods.
The appointment of an ambassador to the WTO will increase
Indonesia's bargaining position to fight for fair trade, said
Ramli.
He cited the unfairness in textile quotas set by the United
States for developing countries. China, for example, gets a quota
of 20 percent of the total U.S. imports and India 4.3 percent.
Indonesia gets a meager two percent.
Another Econit executive, Laksamana Sukardi, said that the
United States also tends to use a unilateral approach when
settling disputes with its trading partners.
"The United States, which cries loudly for free trade, forces
trading partners to adopt the so-called voluntary export
restraints," said Ramli.
He charged that such a unilateral approach is against the WTO.
(kod)