JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia will enact an ordinance to prevent predatory pricing on e-commerce platforms, including for Chinese goods, a minister said Thursday as President Joko Widodo urged consumers in Southeast Asia’s largest market to avoid imported products.
“Calls to love our own products, Indonesian products, must be taken up. I also promote hatred of products from abroad, ”said Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, during an event organized by the Ministry of Commerce.
“Love our goods, hate foreign goods,” he said without naming a country.
Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi said at a press conference that Jokowi’s remarks were in response to concerns that Chinese manufacturers are copying products designed by Indonesian small and medium-sized companies and selling them on overseas e-commerce platforms at a fraction of the price of local ones Producer crushed.
Lutfi said artificial intelligence is used to identify the bestsellers and it is difficult to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization as digital platforms obscure the origin of the goods, he said.
The Chinese embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Indonesia will introduce a new measure this month to stop “predatory pricing practices” via online trading platforms, the minister said.
“We will regulate electronic commerce,” he said without going into detail.
Last year, Indonesia lowered the threshold at which import taxes are levied on consumer goods sold through e-commerce in order to reduce shipments abroad, especially from China.
China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner and a major investor, but Jakarta laments a persistently high trade deficit. The average annual deficit in goods trade over the past six years has been $ 14 billion, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Commerce.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi in January during a visit to Jakarta that China should remove trade barriers on products such as palm oil, fisheries and fruits in order to address the trade imbalance. Wang then promised to expand Beijing’s imports from Indonesia and increase investment.
Reporting by Bernadette Christina Munthe; Letter from Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Ed Davies
