RI supports liberalization on fish and forest products
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia supports liberalization on forest products, fish and fish products under the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum but is still undecided on chemical and environmental products, an official said yesterday.
Director general of international economic relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Soemadi DM Brotodiningrat, said the four sectors were an amalgamation of 61 sectors put forward by 18 APEC economies at the last senior officials meeting in St. John, Newfoundland, Canada, last week.
"Two of the four sectors are our choice, namely fish and fish products and forest products," Soemadi said in a seminar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Originally, Soemadi said, Indonesia proposed three sectors: fish and fish products, pulp and paper and sports footwear. The first two gained some support.
He said Indonesia could not yet support liberalization of environmental products and chemical products because Indonesia was not strong enough in the two sectors.
"Although we are a net importer of environmental products, it does not mean we can not agree on liberalization of those products. As long as it benefits us, we will support it," he said.
Soemadi, who headed Indonesian delegations at various APEC senior officials meetings, said the four sectors would be put together in the so-called "balanced package of liberalization".
Therefore, if one member agreed to join liberalization, it automatically agreed to adopt liberalization for all sectors in the package.
But most developing APEC economies still had questions regarding liberalization. If those questions could not be addressed by developed members, they might not support liberalization at all, Soemadi said.
They questioned whether the planned liberalization would eventually be taken to the World Trade Organization (WTO) like the Information Technology Agreement (ITA).
In their last meeting in Subic last November, APEC leaders agreed to pursue information technology liberalization. But a month later, the United States took such an agreement to a WTO ministerial meeting in Singapore, which then produced the ITA.
Developing countries questioned if liberalization would be implemented on the basis of most favored nations or reciprocity principles.
They also wanted to know whether liberalization would give a different time frame to developed and developing members in its implementation.
They demanded that economic and technical cooperation principles, which had become the forgotten pillar in APEC, be included.
"If those questions and concerns could not be addressed properly, developing members were of the opinion that liberalization could not be pursued further under APEC," Soemadi said.
Senior officials will meet again at the end of October in Singapore to finalize APEC's free trade agenda, including liberalization, for the Vancouver summit in November.
Meanwhile, CSIS executive director Mari E. Pangestu said Indonesia's private sector should monitor the development of liberalization and provide suggestions to the government on its implementation.
She said private sectors from developed countries had been behind the ITA, adding they would still be behind developed countries to finalize liberalization on sectors they benefited most.
The United States' proposal to liberalize the chemical industry, for instance, was supported by large private corporations under the APEC Coalition on Chemical Industry, Mari said.
APEC includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. The organization aims to achieve free and open trade and investment by 2010 for developed countries and by 2020 among all member countries. (rid)