Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Steel producers against imports liberalization

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  • Vincent Lingga
    The Jakarta Post

Jakarta | Mon, October 2, 2017 | 10:32 amDomestic basic steel producers have raised concerns over the government’s plan to further liberalize steel imports as part of a concerted program to improve Indonesia’s position in the World Bank’s annual The Ease of Doing Business Index which now ranks Indonesia 91st out of about 185 countries.

“Even now with import restrictions still in place, imports already control about 55 to 60 percent of our annual steel consumption of around 12 million tons, while our own steel industry operates only at 40 percent of its capacity,” says Hidayat Triseputro, the executive director of the Indonesian Iron and Steel Industry Association.

Data at the trade ministry show Indonesia is now the world’s third biggest net importer of steel and steel trade deficit last year exceeded US$6 billion, the second largest after the oil and gas trade deficits.

Hidayat expressed fear that further import liberalization would damage the national steel industry, which is still at an infant stage of development, because a good portion of the foreign steel entering the country did not meet the national quality standard (SNI). 

But an inter-ministerial team at the office of the chief economics minister in charge of preparing technical details for the 16th deregulatory package still includes basic steel among the commodities in the upcoming import liberalization measures. 

The main factor that prompted the import liberalization initiative seems to be President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s high ambition to upgrade Indonesia’s ranking in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index to 40th in 2019. 

One of the 10 parameters assessed in the World Bank survey is the efficiency of trading across borders and one of the key yardsticks to measure this efficiency is the length of dwelling time (the speed, simplicity and predictability of clearance) of containers at the seaport. Non-tariff measures (NTM) on imports and their administration have been found to slow down the clearance process of goods. 

Trade Law No. 7/2014 allows NTMs to control imports with the objective of protecting national security, the public interest, the health of the people and the sustainability of fauna and flora and the environment.

The law specifically stipulates that the government can impose NTMs to control imports of certain goods to protect domestic manufacturing industries from unfair foreign competition in order to enhance their growth and to safeguard the balance of payments at a healthy level and to protect farmers from unfair competition from foreign producers

NTMs on imports are also deemed necessary because tariff barriers are no longer effective to control imports because more than 65 percent of Indonesian imports have been derived from its free trade agreement 
partners.

Yet more important is that Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago and its coastline is quite porous making it easy to smuggle contraband into the country or circumvent Indonesia’s trade laws.

While most businesspeople assume that Indonesia will eventually have to libelarize its market, they think this process should be gradual and selective, taking into account the development and competitiveness of domestic industries.

Moreover, according to trade ministry data, Indonesia’s position is not so bad with regards to trade protectionism: NTMs in Indonesia cover only 272 of 5,229 harmonized sysem tariffs, as against 601 in the Philippines, 313 in Malaysia, 558 in India and 1,507 in South Korea. 

But uncontrolled import flows could threaten the growth of domestic industries, erode the market competitiveness of local industrial goods and adversely affect the business climate, making investors doubt the long-term certainty and sustainability of their businesses. 

Domestic steel producers suspect that because a lot of foreign steel are often sold here at incredibly low prices, they might have entered the country illegally or circumvented import laws.

Steel executives also argue that in so far as the dwelling time at ports is concerned, the impact of NTMs on steel imports is rather negligible on the eficiency of goods flow because steel procurement or import is inherently a long process, ranging from two to four months from the time orders are made. Because production is mostly based on firm orders with specific technical and quality specifications. 

Hidayat argued that steel impor restrictions are still necessary because the national steel industry — with a total capacity of about 13 million tons, compared to 1.1 billion tons in China — is still in the infancy stage of development. Moreover, steel is seen as the mother of most downstream manufacturing industries and is strategic to the economy. 

No wonder most countries in Asia — which have suceeded in developing competitive manufacturing sectors like Japan, Souh Korea, Taiwan and China — started with the building of competitive basic steel industries.

Another reason why trade restructive measures are needed is that basic steel materials or products vary widely in quality, technical specifications and usage.

“Without restrictive measures that require thorough inspection, steel imports could easily circumvent our trading laws and quality specifications and inundate our market,” Hidayat said.

Instead of liberalizing imports, the government should help support the development of the basic steel industry through compulsory local content requirement, higher quality standards and tougher terms for new steel investment to ensure efficient and non-polluting industries.
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NGOs, firms need constructive engagement

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  • Vincent Lingga
Jakarta | Wed, September 6 2017 | 12:54 amThe emotional outbursts of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) against international environmental NGOs, though regrettably smacking of an expression of xenophobia, are the understandable explosion of frustrations over what plantation companies see as a perpetual foreign attack on palm oil, currently one of the largest foreign exchange earners in the country.

The editorial published on the GAPKI website on the 72nd independence anniversary last month, which urges the government to free palm oil from “colonial attacks” by international NGOs, reflects the industry’s wrath over what they consider to be a complete lack of appreciation for improvements already made in sustainable palm oil management over the past ten years.

Indonesian palm oil and its derivatives have been under the scrutiny of international environmentalists since the early 2000s after the widespread forest fire in 1997 and the astronomical expansion of oil palm plantations since the 1990s, which caused massive deforestation. 

Lately, several NGOs also have been campaigning to virtually coerce overseas industrial users or consumers to boycott Indonesian paper-grade pulp and dissolving pulp in a protest against the environmentally and socially irresponsible practices they allege in pulp estate management. 

Dissolving pulp for making viscose fiber fulfills Indonesia’s need for textile materials, because cotton does not grow well in the country.

Palm oil now accounts for almost 50 percent of global vegetable oil consumption and has increasingly been leading the market, as agronomists estimate its yield per hectare to be nine times as high as soybeans, five times as high as rapeseed and eight times as high as sunflowers. 

For Indonesia, now the world’s largest palm oil producer, this commodity has been developing as a very important part of the economy, since smallholders own 40 percent of the estimated 11 million hectares of oil palm plantations. Indonesia exported around 26 million tons last year, or almost half of the global palm oil trade.

We should, however, give credit where credit is due. International NGOs have campaigned tirelessly to build market (consumer) pressures to force the government, companies and farmers to implement environmentally and socially sustainable management in palm oil and forest products.

The NGOs’ global public opinion campaign has also contributed to strengthening the commitment of the government and businesspeople to legislate and enact stronger rules on high standards of sustainability.

Palm oil producers are now governed under the sustainability standards of the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) program, which is legally compulsory, and the international multi-stakeholder Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a market-driven certification scheme. 

Palm oil and pulp producing companies, notably the big ones, have increasingly realized, again owing partly to the stringent scrutiny by NGOs, that what is bad for the environment and the surrounding communities is also bad for business.

Several years of constructive engagement have led the European Union and Indonesia to a sustainability certification scheme for wood products under the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT). This scheme audits the entire supply chain in Indonesia, from the source of timber to downstream processing, and to the point of exporting to ensure social and environmental sustainability.

Even now, international NGOs still play a role in promoting sustainable management practices of natural resources, especially in the forestry sector where the rule of law at all levels, from forest-use planning to licensing, management and law enforcement, is still inadequate.

Certainly, the achievements of the ISPO sustainability program still fall short of expectations, as the program is an ongoing process, especially because the pulp and palm oil industries involve millions of smallholders/farmers with complex poverty problems. The problem has been made even more complex by the huge gap in land registry and titling and the poor land–use planning in the country.

Now, as the NGO scrutiny has increasingly extended from environmental problems to social issues such as labor and human rights and land disputes, the solution has become even more complex and more time consuming, a process that often requires capacity building at local administrations and government institutions. 

The problem, though, is that most foreign NGOs often fail to comprehend the complexity of social conflicts and land disputes in Indonesia. They often and easily resort to a blame game against big companies if the conflicts are not resolved as quickly as they expected and mount up campaigns to boycott products. They tend to use the conditions in developed countries as their benchmark.

Attacking big companies is much easier, as they have a high profile and visibility, and many of them are listed on the Indonesian stock exchange with tough disclosure requirements. But what is actually needed is continuous and constructive, not adversarial, engagement between NGOs, the government, businesses and farmers.

Take, for example, the negative campaign on pulp producers run by several NGOs through their websites, alleging that they had grabbed the lands of the local people and deprived them of their traditional means of livelihood.

True, land disputes have mushroomed, especially since the Constitutional Court’s 2012 decision confirming that customary and communal forests are not state forests/land and must be excluded from state land concessions. 

But the claims for customary forests/land cannot always be settled quickly, because they must first be verified by the directorate general of social forestry and environmental partnership in cooperation with independent teams consisting of anthropologists, sociologists, informal leaders, legal consultants and lawyers.

For example, publicly listed PT Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL), which produces dissolving pulp in North Sumatra, received 11 claims from local communities for plots of land inside its concession. After a long process of verifying the claims, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry decided last December to approve only one of the claims covering 5,172 ha of forests and took them out of the TPL concession. 

TPL Director Mulia Nauli confirmed TPL had returned that piece of land to the state and President Jokowi ratified the status of the land as customary/communal forests on Dec. 30, 2016 in a ceremony at the State Palace. But the ministry said the remaining 10 claims had yet to be verified by the directorate general of social forestry and environmental partnership and independent teams, and so ordered the TPL to wait for the results of the verification before acting on those 10 claims. 

But several NGOs still continue to bash the TPL on their websites and social media, accusing the company of grabbing the local people’s lands and pushing industrial users to boycott TPL’s products. The government should not allow such negative campaigns with baseless accusations to damage Indonesian products in the international market. 
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The writer is senior editor at 
The Jakarta Post.
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