Indonesia needs fair competition law: Tunky
Indonesia needs fair competition law: Tunky
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia badly needs a fair competition law to
improve the country's efficiency, Minister of Industry Tunky
Ariwibowo said yesterday.
"To ensure high efficiency, our country clearly needs a law on
fair competition," Tunky said in a keynote address at a seminar
on economic law reform organized by the Inter-Pacific Bar
Association.
Many parties have expressed concern about the absence of fair
competition legislation, said to be needed to provide a level
playing field for all economic players.
Tunky called on the local legal community to help improve the
country's economic legal framework.
"Indonesia's business community is waiting for the
contribution of our legal experts from all layers of society so
that we may improve our legal system, particularly in facing the
unavoidable impact of the era of globalization," the minister
said.
He added that legal experts could use the results of the
government's deregulation and bureaucratic reform programs as one
of their sources in planning improvements to the country's legal
system.
He said that, while Indonesia's economic reforms had included
the enactment of laws on limited liability companies and the
capital market, it still needs to enact more economic laws. The
laws needed include new laws on investment, secured transactions
and alternative dispute resolution, he said.
"These legal issues are of the utmost importance in our
development process as we enter the era of globalization," Tunky
said.
Concurring with Tunky's suggestion, Normin S. Pakpahan,
chairman of the Economic Law and Improved Procurement Systems
Project, said that Indonesia needs to speed up its economic law
reforms to ensure legal certainty.
Normin said Indonesia's arbitration, bankruptcy and contracts
laws, for instance -- which are still based on colonial laws --
are inadequate for the needs of the modern business community.
"In many instances, the out-dated laws are simply ignored and
each conflict is resolved on an ad hoc basis," Normin said.
"A very positive development is that the Minister of Justice
has appointed a committee to prepare a draft of an arbitration
law, which is a subject of utmost importance to the business
community," he added.
He said that, through the current step-by-step efforts at
economic law reform, Indonesia is attempting to modernize its
commercial law system to facilitate private and public
investment, improve productivity, encourage innovation and
augment its international competitiveness.
Meanwhile, Sunaryati Hartono, head of the National Law Reform
Agency at the Ministry of Justice, said that legal reform
involves, not only changes to legislation, but also reforms of
the people's values and attitudes.
At the same time, she said, legal reforms should also touch on
the modernization of legal institutions, including their
procedures and mechanisms, as well as of the whole legal
infrastructure, including the legal education system. (rid)