WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/MIN(01)/ST/39
11 November 2001
(01-5654)
MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE
Fourth Session
Doha, 9 - 13 November 2001Original:  English
INDONESIA
Statement by H.E. Mrs Rini M.S. Soewandi
Minister of Industry and Trade
It is a great honour for me to be able to address the WTO Fourth Ministerial Conference,
which takes place in this beautiful city of Doha, Qatar.  Allow me, to firstly extend my profound
gratitude and high appreciation to the Government and people of Qatar for their warm hospitality andfor the tremendous efforts they have exerted in prepar ing the facilities for this conference.  May I also
take this opportunity to express my appreciation to the WTO Secretariat staff for their hard work in
assisting the substantive preparation of this conference.
As the threat to the world economy of a gloomy global recession looms, countries have
increasingly looked towards the WTO for answer s and to provide the much-needed economic boost.
Various WTO Members have tabled comprehensive agenda as solutions to foster the sagging world
economy.  However, the experience of the last decade has shown that it was by ensuring greater
market access in the multilateral trading system, that the WTO was able to contribute significantly to
the world economic growth and development.  While it is argued that other issues might play a role in
the multilateral trading system, in the face of the current global economic downturn.  Indonesia is
convinced that it is only by further ensuring greater market access in the world economy, especially
for products of developing countries, that can avoid a global recession and re-ignite trade as theengine of future economic growth.
In this light Indonesia fully recognizes the importance of preserving and improving the
multilateral trading system in order to promote economic growth, development and employment.
Accordingly, Indonesia is fully aware that all oblig ations therein should be implemented in the form
of policies consistent with rules and procedures  of WTO Agreements.  Al though Indonesia is being
severely affected by the financial crisis for a very long time, we have not reneged on our
commitments in the WTO and have unilaterally and consistently pursued trade liberalization, and in
some cases even beyond our existing WTO commitments.  Of course, we also share the concerns that
the system itself needs to focus more clearly on the needs of the developing world, particularly as the
globalization process has unleashed unprecedented challenges and opportunities at times whereindustries are ill-equipped to either adapt to or take advantage of.  A blind belief in the multilateral
system is not enough in itself.  We need to ensure that the rules-based multilateral trading system is
adapted to securing a fair share in the growth in  international trade for the developing world, and in
the case of Indonesia commensurate with the needs of our economic development.
Being a WTO Member, Indonesia wishes to see WTO as an institution for the multilateral
trading system that could create an appropriate policy to respond to the challenges posed by the
growing interdependence of national economies especially as we are experiencing global economic
downturn.  In particular the process of globalization, which has emerged partly with the lowering of
barriers to trade, has marginalized a number of developing countries in the global economy.  The
reversal of this process also requires close coordination between the IMF, the World Bank and theWT/MIN(01)/ST/39
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WTO.  In this context, the WTO has to move to the centre stage in an evolving system of global
economic governance in order to ensure a more equitable distribution of trade.  This as a whole will
benefit all Members, in particular the least-developed and developing ones, from increased
opportunities and gains from trade liberalization.
We are all aware that the establishment of the WTO is to ensure strengthened rules-based
international trading system that provides enhanced certainty and security for market access.  Through
strengthened rules-based international trading system, unilateral trade restrictive measures imposed by
certain Member countries could be prevented.  This is the very essential contribution of the WTO to
the creation of a system of transparent and predictable global economic governance.  Furthermore, the
key challenge confronting the multilateral trading syst em is to ensure that issues of development are
addressed adequately and decisively.
Indonesia together with many other developing and least developed countries repeatedly
stress the importance of Implementation Issues as we have a range of concerns under existing WTO
Agreements that we seek to address.  We strongly urged that these issues be fully addressed and
resolved before engaging into a new package of mu ltilateral negotiations.  It is imperative for the
credibility of the multilateral trading system.  It is also part of building confidence for developing
countries.  We maintain that the problems of implementation not only involve the inability ofMembers to comply with their obligations, but also relate to measures that are in clear contravention
with the spirit of the Agreement.  For example, we are strongly of the view that some provisions
Agreement on anti-dumping needs to be improved or amended.  In the context of Agreement on
Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, we seek to review Annex VII of the Agreement so as to
enable developing countries to automatically rese rve the right to have flexibility under Annex VII of
the Agreement.  Similarly, we seek improvement in the implementation of the Agreement on Textiles
and Clothing, crucial to the economies of many developing countries.  For some agreements, the
existing substantive and procedural obligation are difficult to implement and often go beyond the
capacity of developing countries.  In this case, technical assistance is very helpful to them in order to
increase their capacity, to fulfil their obligations properly.  The success of this Ministerial Conferencewill very much lie on satisfactory resolution of these implementation issues.
Equally important as implementation issues, my delegation would like to take this opportunity
to, once again, reiterate and emphasize our concerns over the role of Special and Differential
Treatment in assisting least-developed and devel oping Members in implementing their obligations as
well as deriving benefits from trade liberalization.  We believe that the benefits of trade liberalization
would be more equitably shared if all countries have more or less similar level of capacity and
economic development.  Therefore, many other developing countries, including Indonesia, believethat it is imperative that relevant WTO provisions on special and differential (S&D) treatment for
developing countries be an integral part of all WTO negotiations and embodied in the commitments.
These provisions should also be reviewed and impr oved in order to make it more adapted to current
realities, operational and mandatory, so as to enable least-developed and developing countries to
effectively pursue their development objectives while participating fully in the international tradingsystem.
While we are committed on the future role of the multilateral trading system, we nevertheless,
need to ensure that future agenda should be focu sed on issues of competence to the WTO that could
accommodate the interest of all Members particularly the developing countries.
In the area of agriculture, our objectives are to achieve a substantial improvement of market
access opportunities for our current and potential agriculture export products in order to improve fair
trade conditions on imported or exported agricultural products;  and to ensure that non-trade concerns
of developing countries such as rural development, poverty alleviation and food security are fully
accommodated in the ongoing negotiations.  In recognition of the unequal capacity and level of
development of developed and developing countries, the special and differential treatment forWT/MIN(01)/ST/39
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developing countries should be an integral element of the negotiations and shall be embodied in the
Schedules of concessions and commitments and, as appropriate, in the WTO rules and disciplines to
be negotiated.
The TRIPs Agreement, should be interpreted to  ensure that the benefits of intellectual
property regimes are equitably shared between the innovators and users of technology.  Intellectual
property protection, which encourages innovation and technological development, should be
implemented in a manner that meets public and social policy objectives, as well as striking a balance
between intellectual property protection and maintaining a competitive international trading
environment.  Indonesia believes that issues which should be clarified, amongst others are the
protection of bio-diversity and food security.
Regarding the promotion of public health in terest and the relationship with the TRIPS
Agreement, while we fully respect the importance of intellectual property rights protection inproviding private rewards, and to some extent stimulus towards research and development, our main
concern are related to the limited options to make available the needed medicines at affordable price.
As we cannot ignore the fact that, under the TRIPS Agreement, public interest in relation to public
health has not been fully safeguarded, my delegation is strongly of the position that it is highly
important for WTO to address the concerns of developing countries on this issue and adopt ameaningful Ministerial Declaration which ensure th at Members particularly developing countries are
allowed and encouraged to avail themselves to the widest range of policy options for protection and
promotion of public health by ensuring full access to medicine, especially for pandemic and epidemic.
We consider the importance of Market Access for non-agricultural products as an important
subject for developing countries.  Indonesia is of the view that this negotiation should ensure ourobjective to ensure the reduction and elimination of tariff peaks and tariff escalation on products of
export interest and in value added sector that offer to build upon the comparative advantages of the
developing countries.  While the average MFN tariff rate in the major advanced industrial countries
are low, the level and the frequency of tariffs remain a matter of concern in a number of key sectors of
direct interest to developing countries.  Frequent tariff peaks and significant tariff escalation stillapply on textiles and clothing, footwear, processed food, natural-based products, such as fish and
fisheries products, forest and forestry products, leather and leather goods and tropical products.
Although tariff escalation has decreased as a result of the Uruguay Round, rising tariffs from raw
materials to intermediate products and sometimes peaked for finished industrial products restrict
export opportunities and hamper vertical diversification and industrialization in developing countries.
In general, the growth of exports of developing c ountries to industrial countries is inversely related to
the degree of tariff protection in the latter.
In the case of a more open international trading environment, we are very concerned about the
proliferation of obstacles imposed on exports of developing countries for health, sanitary and safety
reasons.  This is one of the areas in which many developing countries, require considerable technical,
human and financial support in order to be able to meet the legitimate product standards.
We fully recognize that services sector plays an important role to promote economic
development of all countries.  However, negotiations in this area have tended to focus on sectors of
primary interest to developed country Members such as basic telecommunications and financial
services at the expense of others, particularly those of primary interest to developing countries.
Indonesia is strongly of the opinion that services negotiation should aim to achieve a fair and
balanced package for the entire WTO membership.  The negotiations should cover all issues in
services sectors with no a priori exclusions.  Moreover, as the GATS also recognizes the special status
of developing countries vis-à-vis  the asymmetry that exist in respect of their economic development
and their competitiveness as services providers, th e negotiations should also provide flexibility for
individual developing countries to open fewer sectors and to liberalize less types of transactions, andWT/MIN(01)/ST/39
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to progressively extend market access in line with their development needs.  In this case, the full
integration of developing countries into the global trade in services requires a genuine effort and more
definite programme for capacity building so as to enable them to compete in the even more fierce
world market.
Furthermore, Indonesia is strongly of the position that Members shall complete the
negotiations on the establishment of rules on Emergency Safeguard Measures in this area, to enable
any Member to resort to a safeguard measure should its domestic services industries experience
injury.  It is also extremely important that the negotiations in services recognizes and provides due
credit to autonomous liberalization measures undertaken by Members beyond their commitments.
We believe that we have to pay full attention to increase the role of LDCs into the multilateral
trading system should be taken into account.  Because WTO, since its inception, has had its
programmes to welcome the developed countries to best help the LDCs by providing market accessfor their products of interest.  It is, therefore, obvious that to accelerate their economic integration, we
have to fully support the LDCs to build up their capacities so that they can take advantage of market
access opportunities.  On the other hand, we also support the non-WTO Member countries
particularly the least-developed countries in their accession process into the multilateral trading
system.
Let me briefly touch upon new issues initiated in Singapore Ministerial Conference, namely
Trade and Competition Policy, Transparency in Go vernment Procurement, Trade and Investment, and
Trade Facilitation.  Generally speaking, Indonesia believes that the discussion on these issues have
not yet deeply explored all the consequences and implications of the proposed agreements and
therefore are not well accepted by developing Member countries.  In order to provide a sufficientdegree of comfort for all Members, we should continue examining some key issues of concerns to
many developing countries in a more focused manner and should not rush to enter into negotiations.
Before concluding, I would like to take this opportunity to, once again, reiterate the
importance of spirit of cooperation among us in order to increase confidence of developing and least-
developed country Members that we are all sensitive to their interests, problems and shortcomings.  Iam convinced that with this spirit, this Conference will have a successful and balanced outcome.
Last but not least, I would like to warmly welcome the People's Republic of China and
Chinese Taipei as new Members of this Organiza tion.  Indonesia strongly believes that their
participation will contribute positively to our effort in achieving a fair and free international trade.
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