RI committed to free trade under WTO: Minister

RI committed to free trade under WTO: Minister

Endy M. Bayuni, The Jakarta Post, Santiago

Indonesia remains committed to the goals of free trade but it
will also exercise its right to protect its industries and
workers as far as allowed under the World Trade Organization
(WTO), chief economics minister Aburizal Bakrie says.

"There is no question that free trade will have to be
implemented. The opportunities presented are immense," Aburizal
told a group of Indonesian reporters on Saturday.

"The Bogor Goals for free trade and investment in the Asia
Pacific region remain in place," he said referring to the phrase
now widely used to denote the campaign to turn the huge region
into one giant free trade zone.

Aburizal is a member of the Indonesian delegation to the Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum led by President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono.

This year's gathering in the Chilean capital marks 10 years
since APEC leaders at their summit in the West Java town of Bogor
pronounced their commitment to eliminating all forms of trade and
investment barriers between the 21 member countries (or economies
as APEC calls them), with a deadline of 2010 for developed
countries and 2020 for developing countries.

Aburizal dismissed the claim that the severe economic crisis
that Indonesia went through in 1998-99 was largely caused by the
government, then under president Soeharto, moving too soon and
too fast in liberalizing the economy.

"The crisis was not caused by trade liberalization measures or
by globalization," he said. "It (the crisis) would have happened
anyway without them."

A former businessman who headed the Bakrie Group, Aburizal
recognized that free trade could pose threats for the economy.
"But the opportunities far outweigh the threats."

In spite of reaffirming Indonesia's commitment to free trade,
the minister said Indonesia would be more active in invoking the
injury clause if a particular industry came under threat from
unfair trading practices abroad.

"This is something that we did not do enough of in the 1990s,"
he admitted.

The WTO allows countries to impose some tariffs to protect
their industries against imports under certain conditions,
including economically strategic industries that employ many
people or industries that are damaged by dumping.

Other countries, including those in Europe, regularly invoked
the injury clause, he noted.

"We have not been smart enough to use the WTO rulings that
benefit us," he said, adding that the injury clause would buy
particular industries time to enable them to get back on their
feet again.

Aburizal begged to differ with those in the business world who
at this APEC conference expressed concerns about the growth of so
many regional free trade and bilateral free trade agreements
within Asia Pacific. They argue that these agreements could
undermine the Bogor Goals for free trade across the region.

"On the contrary, I think these agreements will actually speed
up the process toward the Bogor Goals," he said.

"Obviously, there is a desire among some APEC members to
accelerate the process toward free trade. If you add them up, it
amounts to quite a lot, for example, in East Asia. And they have
the effect of actually speeding up the process," he said.

Indonesia is also discussing free trade agreements with a
number of countries, like the United States and Japan.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has already
began the process of forging free trade within its 10 member
countries, including Indonesia, and the group has in turn signed
free trade deals with China and Japan.

APEC ministers at their meeting last week recognized the
existence of these regional and bilateral free trade agreements
but appealed for the establishment of good practices as
guidelines on how these agreements should be concluded so that
they would remain consistent with the Bogor Goals.

At this APEC meeting, many members, including Indonesia tried
to steer the forum back to discussing economic issues, wary that
the forum, including the summit of its leaders, had veered from
its original objectives when it was created in 1989.

APEC has expanded not only in membership, but also in terms of
the issues discussed so that its communiques seem to grow longer
each year.

"The E in APEC stands for economics," Aburizal said.

Non-economic issues are important, but APEC is not the forum
for many of them, he said.

Counterterrorism, a subject high in the APEC agenda since the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States,
remained important for APEC, he said.

Terrorism had become a transnational threat, and there were
also the issues of terrorist financing and the need for countries
to act together to fight against money laundering as part of the
financing of terrorist operations, he said.

But there were other non-economic issues that should not have
been brought to APEC.

"Let's all go back to the Bogor Goals," he suggested.