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)