Regulation and Re-regulation of Indonesia?s Multilateral Trading System to Improve Market Potential

Universitas Pelita Harapan?s (UPH) Faculty of Law held a seminar entitled ?Peningkatan Pemahaman Terhadap Sistem Perdagangan Multilateral dalam Kerangka World Trade Organization (WTO)?, on Tuesday (26/5).

Lippo Village (26/5) ?? Universitas Pelita Harapan?s (UPH) Faculty of Law held a seminar entitled ?Peningkatan Pemahaman Terhadap Sistem Perdagangan Multilateral dalam Kerangka World Trade Organization (WTO)?, on Tuesday (26/5). The seminar discussed Indonesia?s multilateral trading problems and solutions.

Director of Trade, Industry, Investment, and HKI DEPLU, Asianto Sinambela; National Team Advisor for International Trade Negotiation, Adolf Warouw; and UPH?s Faculty of Law Teacher, Jessica Los Banos were the speakers in this seminar.

In the seminar, Sinambela related globalization and liberalization with the world of multilateral trading. He asserted that globalization made multilateral trading expanded wider and therefore, Indonesia, which is also a potential target in multilateral trading received a lot of demands to broaden its market network.

Sinambela stated, Indonesia basically was ready to broaden its market network as long as social economy and infrastructure development was increased. He stated that one of the ways to broaden the market was by regulating and re-regulating multilateral trading system.

?We must see, if we don?t have enough regulation then create new ones. If we already have enough, analyze whether or not the regulation can accommodate foreign investors to Indonesia. If they turn out to be not so useful, we must see what is the problem,? he said.

Another thing Indonesia should do, said Sinambela, was to adjust our domestic trading system with internationally standardized multilateral trading system which World Trade Organization (WTO) had approved.

Adolf Warouw who also spoke in the seminar added Sinambela?s statement by explaining that Indonesia would be able to adjust its trading system with WTO?s multilateral trading system by observing how ready we were to expand our market network during globalization, which often led to liberalization.

?The best thing to do is to build strategy based on liberalization, rather than reject the liberalization. Don?t regard it as a negative issue,? he said.

Warouw and Sinambela both agreed that before adjusting our trading policies and broaden our market network, Indonesia needed to tidy up itself in its many multilateral trading problems, starting from unjust trading practices to government?s regulations which on the contrary, block our market access.

?Trading practices such as illegal trading which includes smuggling, pirating, and transshipment, there are also government?s regulations such as tariff escalation, tariff rate quota, and tariff preferences that should be settled before we broaden our market,? said Sinambela.