REPUBLIKA CO.ID,  JAKARTA – Indonesia is urged not to be in hurry to sign the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with European Union. A member of Institute for Economic Studies, Research and Development (LP3E) in Chamber of Commerce, Ina Primiana, said another free trade could further burden Indonesia.

The CEPA scheme is made to ease the market access for Europe as the continent still suffers from crisis. "They are very interested to have trading liberalization," Primiana said.

Meanwhile, Indonesian industry has not recovered yet because of ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA). Indonesia competitiveness is still low compared to European countries.

If CEPA aims at the decreasing of tariff, Indonesia already has low import duty. She said that Indonesia must focus on infrastructure, bureaucracy, and logistics before entering free trade.

Since 2008, the export of Indonesian products has been declining. Indonesia suffered deficit in around 3,451 million USD. In 2010, Indonesia was also deficit on 3,100 million USD. Even until June 2012, the balance for industrial products had reached 12,431.6 million USD.

The Secretary of Directorate General of International Industry Cooperation at the Ministry of Industry, Dyah Winarni Poedjiwati, admitted that the export of Indonesian industrial products was still deficit. "The cause of the deficit is because of many investments, but they bring the foreign capital. Deficit can threaten our current account," she said.

The structure of Indonesian industry is currently dominated with low technology, while Europeans have high-technology products. The Director General of National Export Development Gusmardi Bustami said the standard of export to Europe was quite high, but it was considered as a challenge for Indonesian industries to improve its quality.

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