Author: Mari Pangestu, Indonesian Minister of Trade

The importance of completing the Doha Development Agenda sooner rather than later goes beyond bringing gains of US$360 billion of additional trade with substantial benefits for industrialised and developing economies.

As a developing country policymaker — and I believe I speak for many other developing countries — I am greatly worried about the costs and opportunity lost of not completing Doha. Read more…

Author: Mari Pangestu, Indonesia’s Trade Minister

When APEC was created in the late 1980s, economies were categorised as developed and developing. The major economic powers were part of the G7, which then became G8. The main players were countries from Western Europe, Japan, USA and Canada. Now a number of developing countries have become fast growing emerging economies, and they are fast catching up with the developed countries.

Since 1990 the average annual growth rate of trade between developing countries grew twice the rate of growth of world trade and developing country trade with each other is now 39 per cent of their total trade. Read more…

Author: Mari Pangestu, Ministry of Trade, Indonesia

Hadi Marwoto Soesastro passed away on May 4, 2010 at 5.30am just a few days after his 65^th birthday. He had been in a coma for 10 days. According to his family he passed away peacefully with a smile on his face. This is so reminiscent of the Hadi Soesastro, or Mingkie (his nickname, derived from his Chinese name), who we all knew and loved – calm, smiling, and always providing comfort or a solution.

I wish I had been there to take one last look. Before I left for my trip to Shanghai and the US, I went to the hospital to take my leave, perhaps subconsciously realising that this was probably the last time that I would see him. Read more…