W

hile regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP) talks in Brunei Darussalam are focusing on trade liberalization, Indonesia has proposed room for countries to discuss free trade exceptions.

Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan, who attended the ministerial meeting in Brunei, said room for discussion was necessary considering the differences in preparedness among country participants.

Gita said he was concerned over the tendency of certain countries to be '€œtoo aggressive'€ by putting several issues on the table, such as e-commerce and intellectual property rights, all at once for negotiation.

'€œIf this happens, it will be hard to manage negotiations. The dynamism and traits of these negotiations are different from other negotiations,'€ he told The Jakarta Post in an emailed interview on Thursday.

Gita added that the RCEP was based on agreements between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners: Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

Not all of the six countries have signed free-trade deals with each other.

Gita made the comment after attending the first ministerial meeting on RCEP in Bandar Sri Begawan on Monday.

During the meeting, Indonesia also put strong emphasis on the necessity to negotiate in a frank manner with each country to reveal difficulties with any proposed commitment and to provide special treatment for least-developed countries in Southeast Asia '€” Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

Devised during the ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, last year, the RCEP will form the world'€™s biggest economic bloc by 2015 with a 16-country integrated market across the Asia Pacific.

It will encompass roughly 3.4 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of US$21.2 trillion last year.

Each of the non-ASEAN partners have sealed separate free trade agreements (FTAs) with the Southeast Asian grouping.

The RCEP is estimated to give income gains of approximately $644 billion by 2025, or equal to 0.6 percent of the world'€™s GDP, due to the faster flow of goods, services, investment and labor across participating economies, according to a study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

As for Indonesia, the deal will push up its GDP by more than 1 percent through the designated time line by forging the partnership.

In the first meeting, the ministers from 16 nations welcomed the establishment of three working groups '€” trade in goods, trade in services and investment '€” and the initial exchange of views among participating countries, according to a joint media statement.

The second round of negotiations is scheduled to take place in Brisbane, Australia, on Sept. 23 to 27.

For the next step, the RCEP trade negotiating committee will task working groups with developing modalities for negotiations, the committee'€™s chair Iman Pambagyo said.

Negotiators will follow guidance from the ministers suggesting that the application of the liberalization commitment run on a single schedule, despite some exceptions based on sensitivity within some
countries.

'€œWe realize that there should be flexibility and frankness in negotiations because this is a historic initiative that any country has yet to undergo,'€ Iman told the Post.