Indonesia told to quit from Cairns Group

Indonesia told to quit from Cairns Group

A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia must quit from the Cairns Group of agricultural
exporting nations, a local non-governmental organization (NGO)
said on Thursday.

The NGO, called the Institute for Global Justice, argued that
Indonesia had no longer been considered an agricultural exporting
nation since 1990, meaning that membership of the lobby group
would offer no benefit to the country.

It added that the move would ensure Indonesia was free to
determine the course of its agriculture policies.

"Indonesia has always been under pressure from dominant
members of the group (Cairns Group), like Australia and New
Zealand," said Nur Hidayat, an activist at the NGO, at Thursday's
media conference.

He pointed out that Indonesia had often been forced by
Australia and New Zealand to follow the agricultural policies of
the two latter countries, although the policies were often
harmful to local farmers.

One example of the policy campaigned for by Australia is the
complete elimination of subsidies for farmers and agriculture
products.

The institute strongly criticized an earlier proposal made by
the Cairns Group to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to cut
import tariffs on agriculture products to no more than 25
percent.

But Hidayat said that the government had resisted the demand,
as local agricultural producers were not yet fully prepared to
compete with overseas producers, and that farmers had also still
to be given subsidies to survive.

He said that the liberalization drive would only cause serious
damage to the country's agriculture sector.

In order to free itself from diplomatic pressure by key
members at the Cairns Group, Indonesia had no other way than to
quit from the lobby group, Hidayat said.

The Cairns Group, a coalition of agricultural exporting
nations, was established in 1986. The coalition, which is chaired
by Australia, covers one-third of the world's total volume of
agricultural exports.

It has become an influential lobby group in the WTO, in which
its policies are influential in determining the WTO's policy
course.