Indonesia hopes that the Indonesia-European Union Comprehensive Partnership Agreement (IEU-CEPA) will be ratified and implemented soon, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Arif Havas Oegroseno.
After attending a public discussion hosted by the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) here on Saturday (July 19), the deputy minister highlighted that IEU-CEPA needed nine years before it could finally be concluded.
"The next duty for our colleagues in government ministries is to draft the technical documents. We hope (the IEU-CEPA) can be ratified and implemented very soon," Oegroseno said.
He stated that the trade agreement will open trade access for the combined 840 million population of Indonesia and the European Union.
It will also expand market access for Indonesia-made products to economically developed European Union countries where they will enjoy zero percent import tariffs, he added.
The Foreign Ministry had earlier described the completion of the IEU-CEPA as a strategic achievement amid ongoing geopolitical volatility.
“As consensus reached on IEU-CEPA, it has become a momentum of strategic economic achievements for the two sides to expand market access amidst the increasingly complex geopolitical and geoeconomic dynamics,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Rolliansyah Soemirat said in his written remarks on Monday (July 14).
US tariff
Meanwhile, responding to the 19-percent import tariff imposed by the United States on Indonesian-made products as reached in the recent bilateral trade deal, Oegroseno said that a tariff imposition cannot be viewed in a black-and-white way of thinking.
"The assessment must be detailed since we are talking about our balance sheets or the trade values for particular commodities," he said.
The deputy minister also said that most of the products consumed by Indonesians are not produced in the United States but in other countries such as China.
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Translator: Cindy Frishanti O, Nabil Ihsan
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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