Recommendations given to WTO negotiators

Recommendations given to WTO negotiators

Zakki P. Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Providing more protection to farmers against surging imports and
nurturing agriculture-based manufacturing were two of a raft of
suggestions submitted to Indonesian negotiators ahead of the
WTO's Sixth Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong in December.

The recommendations were handed over to the negotiating team
on Wednesday by a group representing industry players and the
public.

"The negotiating team has received the recommendations and
will study them shortly," group coordinator Mohamad Oemar, who is
also the director for multilateral trade and industry at the
ministry of foreign affairs, told The Jakarta Post.

Created in a series of workshop titled Formulating Strategic
Development Position ahead of the WTO's Sixth Ministerial Meeting
and organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of
Trade, Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) and
Malaysia-based Third World Network, the suggestions came after a
number of complaints by industry players, who said they had been
left out of the WTO negotiation process.

Stakeholders have also frequently questioned whether the
team's stance in the WTO negotiations really represented the
national interest.

The workshop, the first in the country, had working group
sessions in which stakeholders formulated recommendations they
believed were in line with the national interest. They included
creating positions and strategies for talks in agricultural and
industrial goods and services, development issues and those of
trade facilitation.

Among the recommendations for agriculture: that the government
be required to protect farmers and their lands; be made to secure
farmers' access to water; and be required to provide protection
against surging imports in the form of subsidies or other
protections.

Others include efforts to promote agro-based manufacturing and
ensure food security and sustainable rural development.

Regarding the Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA) talks, the
working group recommended the country fight for the exclusion of
fisheries and forestry from NAMA negotiations -- arguing they
should be included in agriculture.

The group also worked out a detailed formula to slash import
duties for industrial goods.

Development should be the country's top priority ahead of
other issues such as trade and its liberalization, which the
group said should only be seen as a financing instrument for
development. Poverty alleviation and welfare enhancement were
also paramount, it said.

Oemar hoped the workshop would be the first step for
stakeholders as they got further involved in the WTO negotiation
process.

The recommendations come with the WTO under pressure to get
results in Hong Kong and prevent the talks from collapsing as
they did at the last ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in
2003.

Negotiators in the WTO headquarters in Geneva are hoping
countries can iron out sensitive differences before the Hong Kong
meeting, leaving enough room for the ministers to make "final
touches" there.

Government officials have reported that the Cancun meeting
collapsed when countries tried to settle delicate issues during
the event without the proper preliminary talks before.

Indonesian Ambassador to the WTO Gusmardi Bustami said that
the next three months would be a crucial time, in which
negotiators in Geneva would be hard at work trying to resolve the
big stumbling blocks.