NAM members lack trade commitment

JAKARTA (JP): Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) countries have insufficient political will to promote economic relations with fellow members, says an analyst.

Hadi Soesastro, the executive director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Thursday the reason there was little business between NAM members was that most of them preferred trading with developed countries.

"Without firm political will from all members, no economic or political arrangements could work," he told a seminar on the Non- Aligned Movement at University of Indonesia, Depok, West Java.

He said NAM members, most developing countries, were economically and politically dependent on developed nations because few of them had performed well economically.

He was concerned that many members still requested help from developed nations to settle their economic woes.

He acknowledged that developing countries could not isolate themselves from the global economy and political systems dominated by western countries.

"Members of the Movement should, however, build collective economic self-reliance to gradually reduce their dependency on the global market," he said.

Members must build regional or sub-regional market networks as alternatives for their commodities, Hadi said.

Developing countries will not make any substantial progress unless they eliminate their dependency on the international market, he said.

"Indonesia almost always says no to new or sensitive economic issues being discussed at international forums arguing that the country is not ready to deal with the matters," he said, citing this an example of how the country reduces its reliance on developed countries.

The poor condition of trade "infrastructure" in member countries still hampers the promotion of intra-trade activities. Consequently most developing countries rely on foreign finance or shipping companies to help them trade internationally, he said.

"For example, most of Indonesia's high quality garment exports are arranged by Japan's Sogo Sosha," he said.

"Indonesian companies lack financial institutions to support their international trade activities," he said, adding that Indonesia still relied on French banks when trading with Vietnam. (04)