REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA - The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) has expressed hope that the trade attaches at Indonesian embassies abroad should play more effective role to increase the benefits of global trade to the national interest.
"More effective role of trade attaches is needed to widen the global market and to act as marketing intelligence," Kadin's researcher at the Center for Economics and Development Studies (LP3E) Ina Primiana said in a written statement on Sunday.
She noted that the trade attaches at the Indonesian embassies abroad should play more effective role to strengthen the country's bargaining power with foreign parties to protect the national industries.
"They have to make defensive and offensive strategies to strengthen the national industries by finding out the latest information about difficulties being faced by exporters," she said.
Earlier, Kadin Chairman Suryo Bambang Sulisto said Indonesia had had a bitter experience with the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) in which Indonesia's industries were not ready so the domestic market were inundated by goods from China. Sulisto pointed out that in the past few years after the ACFTA, the industries in Indonesia had yet to make any significant progress, after all.