RI fight for more agricultural access

RI fight for more agricultural access

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Despite broad skepticism over the World Trade Organization (WTO)
ministerial summit in Hong Kong striking any significant deals,
Indonesia is still putting the expansion of access for its
agricultural products high on its agenda.

Heading the Group of 33 (G-33) -- under which many
agriculture-based developing and third world countries are
grouped -- Indonesia will focus on gaining the right to enter
non-traditional markets for its products, a top negotiator says.

"We will maintain the United States, India and China as our
current (export) markets, but we will also try to enter the
previously neglected markets like Latin America, Eastern Europe
and the Middle East," Indonesia's WTO negotiator for agricultural
products Delima Azahari said on Monday.

Aside from increasing market access, the Indonesian delegate
will also push for significant cuts in domestic supports and
export subsidies provided by developed countries for its farming
products -- which are worth hundreds of billions of dollars per
year, although such a strategy would be hard to achieve, she
said.

Deadlocked debates over farming subsidies were the main reason
behind the collapse of the last WTO development round talks in
Cancun, Mexico in 2003.

Still, the G-33 members will be striving to fight for this as
a way of protecting their agricultural products -- deemed as
strategic as it affects poverty alleviation and rural
development.

The Hong Kong meeting to be held from Dec. 13 to Dec. 18, is
aimed at, among other things, reaching agreements that would lead
to the slashing of rich nations' farm subsidies, which distort
world markets, and to significantly lower barriers to imports in
both developed and developing countries.

Before the meeting starts, the Indonesian delegate is
scheduled to attend several meetings with the International
Farmers Community, Delima said.

Minister of Trade Mari E. Pangestu said earlier this month
that Indonesia would fight for the liberalization exemption of
four special products: rice, corn, soybean and sugar.

She told the Associated Press on the sidelines of an economic
meeting in Malaysia on Monday that WTO members were unlikely to
break their stalemates over agricultural products. However, she
expressed hope that the issue would not force global free trade
talks to start again from zero.

Any agreements on the products would have to come after Hong
Kong when WTO members hold another summit before mid-2006,
probably in Geneva, she said.

The meeting is supposed to set up a conclusion to the current
Doha round of talks, which aims to cut trade barriers in a wide
range of sectors and to address developing countries' needs.

The Doha Development Agenda, launched in November 2001, aims
to lower barriers to trade in farm and industrial goods and
services.

Meanwhile, aside from agricultural products, discussions on
industrial goods -- known as NAMA (non-agricultural market
access) -- and trade services will also take center stage in the
meeting involving 149 countries.