RI's WTO team asked to fight for greater market access

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia's business community is asking the government delegates to fight for greater market access for Indonesian products in negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Cancun, this week.

Currently, they said, some Indonesian products still faced both tariff and non-tariff barriers in some export markets.

"For example, if we (Indonesian companies) export three-in-one coffee products (consisting of coffee, sugar and creamer), the United States will impose a quota on the products because it protects its sugar," Thomas Darmawan, the executive director for the Indonesian Food and Beverages Association (Gapmmi) told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

Thomas recalled that the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), in its meetings with the government to prepare Indonesia's agenda for the Cancun summit, had also suggested that the Indonesian delegation resist efforts to review the "exclusion list" that may hurt local companies. The exclusion list contain products which are exempted from liberalization.

According to Kadin, the products that Indonesia should fight to keep on the exclusion list include automobile parts.

Kadin also asked the government to encourage countries that still impose high import tariffs to reduce them according to the rates agreed upon in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

"Today, countries like the U.S. still protect certain products with an import tariff as high as 200 percent," Thomas added.

Kadin also asked the government to refuse any talks regarding "new issues". New issues, also known as the "Singapore issues", which consist of competition policies, trade facilitation, government procurement and investment, initially emerged at the first WTO summit in Singapore 1996.

Developed countries have persuaded developing countries to liberalize those four issues. But so far, developing countries have resisted any efforts to put those issues on negotiation tables in WTO summits, arguing that they were not prepared to liberalize those four sectors.

Kadin, however, regretted that the government had moved too faster in liberalizing several sectors, such that some commodities in the country now had import tariffs lower than the minimum rate stipulated by the WTO.

"Currently our import tariff for food products, except for rice and sugar, are already below the rate agreed in the WTO talks," said Thomas.

Indonesia is sending about 40 delegates presided by the Minister of Industry and Trade Rini M.S. Soewandi to the Cancun summit.

Indonesian delegates have reportedly promised to fight for greater market access and to keep protecting the country's strategic products such as corn, rice, soya beans, and sugar.

According to Thomas, Kadin is to send several members, led by Soy Pardede, to Cancun to observe the summit and accompany the government delegates during the summit.