WTO must protect service sector in Third World: Indonesia

WTO must protect service sector in Third World: Indonesia

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia and other ASEAN countries have asked
the World Trade Organization to protect the service sector in
developing countries.

Director for Multilateral Cooperation at the Ministry of
Industry and Trade Herry Soetanto said here on Monday that the
protection should become an integral part of the overall
negotiations to open up the world's services industry.

According to him, such protection should, for example, give a
country the right to decide which services should be opened to
full competition.

In return, a country affected by the protectionist measures
could apply to the WTO for similar protection, he said at a
seminar on liberalization in the service sector.

The WTO launched negotiations on services and agriculture last
year following the failure of a meeting in Seattle in December
1999 which was supposed to launch a wide-ranging round of trade
liberalization talks.

WTO members will try again when they meet in Doha, Qatar,
later this year.

Herry said that the negotiations were expected to be completed
in March next year.

He said that without such safeguards, the Indonesian service
sector would find it difficult to survive when liberalization in
the service industry was fully implemented.

Ashok R. Menon, an international trade policy analyst from the
U.S.-based Nathan Association Inc., said that if the WTO failed
to provide such protection, Indonesia's service deficit would
further increase.

According to the latest WTO data, Indonesia suffered a $7
billion deficit in the export and import of services in 1999.

"The country's deficit in services will reach $8 billion this
year," he said.

He said that Indonesia must be able to improve the quality of
its service sector to enable it to compete as the liberalization
process was irreversible.(05)