Indonesia supports calls of a new trade round talks
Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Indonesia will firmly support calls to hold a new round of multilateral trade negotiations -- now called "work program" -- to ensure the continuation of trade liberalization, a senior government official said on Monday.
"A new work program must be launched, otherwise industrialized countries which have been suffering from an economic downfall following the Sept. 11 attacks, will tend to adopt protectionist policies," director general for international cooperation at the office of the Minister of Trade and Industry Hatanto Reksodipoetro told the Jakarta Post over the phone from Doha, Qatar, where representatives from over 140 countries debated whether to launch a series of talks in areas ranging from agricultural trade to industrial tariffs.
This is one of the most difficult issues to settle at the current World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting, which will end on Tuesday.
Hatanto said that if developed countries move toward protectionism, Indonesia's economy would be adversely affected as the country's exports were highly dependent on those markets.
Minister of Trade and Industry Rini Soewandi said earlier this month that she was optimistic the WTO meeting would agree on launching a new round of multilateral trade negotiations.
Indonesia had benefited greatly from the multilateral trading system, Rini said, citing last year's non oil and gas exports of US$47 billion.
However, such optimism is likely to receive challenges from some countries that see no point in a new work program at all.
The last work program, at that time called a trade round, was enacted at the 1994 Uruguay Round. It is a set of negotiations involving many countries trying to get agreements on lowering customs and barriers to each others goods.
In 1999, there was hope that the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle, United States, would launch a work program, but it failed following an unresolved dispute between the U.S and the European Union.