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.