VIVAnews - The Indonesian government is urged to put agricultural sector out of the Doha round during the Ministerial Conference of World Trade Organization (WTO).
Agrarian Reform Movement Alliance (Agra) Secretary General Erpan Faryadi said Indonesia and other developing countries should be able to exclude agricultural sectors from WTO conference because the particular sector is primary for agrarian countries like Indonesia.
“If it is included, state interest would be at stake,” Faryadi said at a press conference on WTO in Jakarta on Tuesday, November 24.
He also assumed that agreements on agricultural sector inflict losses to the majority of farmers in developing countries especially in term of tariffs and subsidy distribution to the farmers.
Without the two facilities, it would be hard for the outgrowth of developing countries’ agricultural industry to compete with developed countries’.
Other crucial sectors include industry and services. However, in the level of priority, agricultural sector is much more important than the two sectors because 48 percent of Indonesians rely on agriculture to earn a living.
Faryadi also presumes that the current financial crisis is the right momentum for developing countries to discontinue the Doha round.
Meanwhile, senior researcher from Institute of Global Justice (IGJ) Bonnie Setiawan considers WTO having deviated from its initial purpose of governing free trade by eliminating and reducing tariff and non-tariff challenges.
“Hopefully WTO would only be dealing with trade issues, not with other matters like agriculture and intellectual property rights,” Setiawan said.
He also said WTO has been stepping far out of the line by starting to deal with various policies that are outside its authority. WTO has also been partial by giving more support to the developed countries.
“WTO is not only a regime that opens the market, but also a regime that opens investment. Investment is the gate to weak countries for foreign intensity. One of WTO’s policies, the intellectual property rights, can only be imposed by strong industries and countries due to its high cost. It’s an unfair policy,” Setiawan said.
Moreover, the Doha round, which is planned to be completed in 2010, is really not advantageous to Indonesia because it is discussing on two urgent issues which are the removal of subsidies and market opening.
“We expect Indonesia be able to make WTO goes the other way by buying developing countries using its position as the Session Deputy Leader in the upcoming WTO Ministerial Conference,” Setiawan said.
Meantime, Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu said it is highly impossible to bring agricultural sector out of the Doha round. “In negotiations, excluding a sector is impossible. We have to predict the losses and the benefits,” she said.
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Translated by: Nataya Ermanti
