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.