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ndonesia should thoroughly analyze the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that was approved on Monday by the US, Japan and 10 other economies in the Pacific region that account for 40 percent of the world'€™s economy before making up its mind as to whether to join the new regional free trade pact within the medium or long term.

The government rightly decided a few years ago not to join the TPP negotiations, instead focusing on the development of the ASEAN Economic Community and negotiations of ASEAN-led regional comprehensive economic partnerships.

But now that four ASEAN members '€” Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam '€” have become TPP members and several others, including Thailand and the Philippines, are also considering joining the TPP, we should no longer completely rule out the possibility of joining the TPP in the medium or long term.

However, a special team of experts from the ministries of foreign affairs, trade, industry, manpower, forestry and the environment, at least, should thoroughly assess the TPP clauses, especially those on intellectual property rights (IPR), labor and environmental rules and settlement dispute mechanisms in light of our national interests.

The IPR clause could result in steep prices of drugs because the provision allows pharmaceutical firms to extend their monopolies on patented medicines up to eight years and keep cheaper generics off the markets.

The clause on dispute settlement also requires special attention because it allows investors from TPP members who have evidence of being unfairly treated under government regulations to settle disputes through the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism. This is precisely the dispute-settlement mechanism that Indonesia has been fighting to delete from its bilateral investment and trade pacts.

The government should also rigorously examine TPP provisions on labor and environmental rules that are quite stringent to ascertain whether the national institutional capacity is already able to enforce such tough requirements.

The TPP aims at lowering trade barriers to goods and services and setting commercial rules, but like most other regional free trade agreements, it could disadvantage Indonesia, as a non-member, in trading with its members. As more ASEAN countries may join the TPP, Indonesia may be at a disadvantage, compared to Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore in trading with say the US, Canada and Japan.

It is a pity that the biggest headline news amid the failure of the Doha round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks is the emergence of a regional free trade pact, which in the past was typically shunned as a bad alternative to global trade rules. Regional free trade agreements have been criticized as distorting the flow of trade, encouraging businesses not to exploit the comparative advantage and production capabilities, but to seek the best combination of tariff rules from among competing regional frameworks.

But the collapsed WTO trade talks in the face of European agricultural protectionism and other sensitive sectors of the greatest interest to several developed countries, a regional free trade agreement such as the TPP has become a greatly welcomed alternative.