RI has no long term objective in facing WTO talks

Gusmardi Bustami, Indonesian ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva, has confirmed what many analysts have often said: That Indonesia was less prepared than many other nations for trade negotiations at the WTO forum given the absence of long-term goals in the nation's trade policy.

He thus called on the next government and business sector to prepare the nation's trade blueprint.

The ambassador was recently in Jakarta to garner inputs from the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) for the WTO talks. He gave an interview with The Jakarta Post's Zakki P. Hakim in between his busy schedule.

The following is an excerpt of the interview:

Question: Do we have a national agenda for negotiations in the WTO? Answer: We have a national committee on WTO. A national team which is responsible for determining our policy in the negotiations. The team is led by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The team includes subcommittees that work on services, agricultural and nonagricultural sectors. The policy was then delivered to me as a basic reference for negotiations.

What does the national agenda look like? Is it a kind of long- term guideline?

That is exactly our problem. We are facing people with long- term objectives. If you do not have a long-term plan, imagine how hard negotiations could be. This is the current reality. We have no idea where we are heading to and what we want to achieve in a certain period. We do not have that (long-term) plan yet.

What should the next government do then?

The next government should come up with a long-term plan, which we can use as a blueprint to defend and fight for in the international arena. The people could also use the blueprint as a benchmark to evaluate the government's performance. The private sector, meanwhile, can play a significant role by identifying what it needs and forwarding it to the government through, for example, Kadin.

Do we need a separate institution to specifically handle international trade issues?

Looking at the global trend, it is advisable to establish one. International trade issues can no longer be perceived as separate from the national policies. Whatever we decide nationally, we must have a "go international" paradigm. Our domestic market of 220 million people is actually no longer adequate. The real market potential is the world.

Where is the world heading to anyway?

The world is moving toward an open market, a more transparent one. If trade grows well, the global economy will naturally follow suit. Trade is the engine of economic growth. Of course, we still want to protect certain potential sectors in the country. Such a measure is still allowed under the WTO. The measure is called "special and differential treatment". We can not compete fairly against the United States and other industrialized nations, because of the difference in level of capacity. But, we should be able to catch up with them by a certain period. We do want to become a developed country one day, don't we?

What do you expect from Kadin?

The government must work alongside the private sector from now on. There is no reason to ignore complaints and inputs from businesspeople in our joint effort to liberalize the market as well as to protect the domestic market.

Of course, the government cannot address all complaints, as it has also to consider the social and political aspects aside from costs and benefits. Nevertheless, we need inputs from the private sector that we could use as ammunition in the WTO talks. The government might know some issues, but we might miss several others.

The private sector in the developed world, on the other hand, has been very active in providing information, both quantitative and qualitative, to their governments.

Therefore our private sector must establish and strengthen its own research institutions, while the government must be proactive in approaching businesspeople in acquiring the necessary information. So it is two-way communication.

I heard that Kadin is to provide the next government with an industry and trade road map. Short term recommendations are fine, but it should be complete with a long-term objective.

The world is shifting toward services, and the WTO has encouraged member countries to submit by May next year proposals on service sectors for negotiation. Is Indonesia ready?

The service sector has been somewhat neglected. We know it exists, but we do not know how big its contribution is to our economy. There should be a special institution to oversee the whole service sector. Currently each ministry claims to be responsible for related services.

Frankly speaking Indonesia has no figures on the sector. But now, we must not step backwards. We need to identify the problems in the sector. We must have some strength here. Our team is working on it.

The July package (which was agreed upon by WTO members during the latest plenary meeting in Geneva) puts trade facilitation among the issues to be negotiated in the current round of talks. How will it impact us?

Without good trade facilitation, anything we do will not work. We have to fix inadequate infrastructure, human resources and port regulations.

We need to identify the details on the current condition of our infrastructure. If necessary, we could ask for technical and financial assistance from developed countries. Should they refuse to assist us, we could say, "You are pushing us to fix our infrastructure, but why do you refuse to assist us?".

We could also ask for a certain (transition) schedule, during which they could not file any complaint because we are still developing.

However, we need to pay extra attention to local autonomy. We do not want to have local regulations that contradict our international commitments. We need to anticipate that, or else we could receive complaints. It would be costly.