Indonesia told to boost G-33 alliance

Zakki P. Hakim, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Indonesia should play a leading role in the Group of 33 developing nations alliance to protect the interests of developing countries in future World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, experts said in a seminar here on Tuesday.

Despite the few significant gains secured by developing countries in the latest WTO meeting in Geneva earlier this month, most participants had welcomed their increasing role in the negotiations, Malaysian-based Third World Network director Martin Khor said.

"Indonesia, as the leader of G-33 should continue this progress and take a strong position, standing up for its national interests," Khor told a seminar held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The seminar, titled "Steps Indonesia must take after the WTO's July package agreement", also featured Indonesian Anti-Dumping Committee chairwoman Halida Miljani and Bogor Institute of Agriculture economics director Bayu Krisnamurthi.

Khor said there were two significant benefits gained from the Geneva meeting for developing countries. All countries at the forum signed a commitment to eliminate export subsidies for agricultural products. They also agreed to place the three "Singapore issues" outside the negotiating agenda of the Doha work program.

During the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Singapore in 1996, members proposed the issues of trade facilitation, investment, competition and transparency in government procurement be discussed during future meetings.

The Geneva meeting dropped investment, competition and transparency in government procurement from the agenda, but maintained trade facilitation as an issue to be discussed.

Khor said that Indonesia as the leader of the G-33 should push for a clearer schedule for the elimination of export subsidies, as the July package had not fixed an end date or a road-map for the elimination.

The developing countries had succeeded pushing the Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanism (SP-SSM) into the package, however details on categories and the number of products included needed to be further negotiated, he said.

In view of this, Indonesia and other developing countries should hire experts to formulate the SP-SSM in line with each country's national interests, Khor said.

Developing countries should also research the domestic support given to industries in rich countries, especially the U.S. and European Union, as some of these trade-distorting subsidies were disguised as non-distorting ones, he said.

Khor's main concern was the adoption in the July package of a framework on non-agricultural market access (NAMA), an agreement to remove tariffs on industrial goods, which he said could threaten industries in many developing countries.

The NAMA framework required developing countries to give up their flexibility to choose how many tariffs on industrial products they would lift and at what rate, he said.

Many developing countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean had already suffered from a "deindustrialization" process due to the influx of cheap imports of industrial products as a result of rapid liberalization, he said.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Chamber of Commerce international cooperation section vice chairman John A. Prasetio said Indonesia also faced similar threats, as most, if not all, local industries were inefficient compared with their overseas competitors.

The cheap imports were damaging local economies and eventually led to higher unemployment, he said.

"We must have a master plan identifying and listing our main industries. The plan should serve as our base in international and regional negotiations," John said.