Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution said the agreements would be ratified by government regulation.

“We decided in the coordination meeting that we would ratify the seven international trade agreements according to the trade law. We need to take this decision because of the importance of these trade agreements,” Darmin said after chairing the meeting at his Jakarta office as quoted by kompas.com.

Darmin said the move was based on Article 84, Paragraph 4 of Law No. 7/2014 on trade, which states: “If the House of Representatives has not made a decision within 60 days after an international trade agreement is submitted, the government may make a decision without House approval.”

The government submitted the draft agreements to the House two months ago, Darmin added, and that he would soon meet with President Joko Widodo to discuss the draft agreements.

Darmin said the country could suffer losses if the trade agreements were not ratified. For example, if Indonesia did not ratify the First Protocol to amend AANZFTA, the country would not benefit from the preferential tariffs in the amended agreement.

He added that Indonesia would greatly benefit from the AANZFTA, because 73.6 percent of all exports to Australia, worth US$1.76 billion, used the AANZFTA facility.

The six other agreements are the Agreement on Trade in Services under the ASEAN-India FTA (AITISA), the Third Protocol to Amend the Agreement on Trade in Goods under ASEAN-Korea FTA (AKFTA), the Protocol to Amend the Framework Agreement under ASEAN-China FTA (ACFTA), the ASEAN Agreement on Medical Device Directive (AMDD), the Protocol to Implement the 9th ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS-9), and the Protocol to Amend Indonesia-Pakistan PTA (IP-PTA). (bbn)

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