RI supports liberalization on fish and forest products

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)