VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Mar. 4 - Hong Kong has been excluded from the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom because its economic policies are controlled from Beijing, the Washington-based think tank said, removing Hong Kong from a list it topped for 25 years up to 2019.

The title of the world’s freest economy for 2021 was retained by Singapore for the second year, the Heritage Foundation said, with Hong Kong’s investment freedom hurt by political and social unrest dating back to 2019.

In the 2021 index published on Thursday, the foundation said Hong Kong and Macau, both special administrative regions of China, were no longer included because even though citizens enjoy more economic freedom than the average resident of China, “developments in recent years have demonstrated unambiguously that those policies are ultimately controlled from Beijing”.

Developments in Hong Kong or Macau that are relevant to economic freedom would be considered in the context of China’s evaluation in the index, it added. China slipped to 107 from 103, among the list of 178 countries.

A spokesman for the Hong Kong government’s financial secretary expressed “deep disappointment” at the decision.

“The decision is neither warranted nor justified. It does not do justice to (Hong Kong),” the spokesman said, adding that the claim that the city’s economic policies are controlled by Beijing is “ill-conceived and simply not true”.

He added that the assessment was “politically biased” and that Hong Kong’s core economic competitiveness, including free flow of capital, remains under the “one country, two systems” formula of governance put in place in 1997 when the city reverted from British to Chinese rule.

The U.S. suspended Hong Kong’s preferential tariff rates for exports to the country and imposed sanctions on Hong Kong and Beijing officials last year in response to China’s imposition of a national security law on the former British colony, saying it undermined the city’s high autonomy.

Critics of the law say it is aimed at crushing dissent, while authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong say it was necessary to restore stability after anti-government and anti-China unrest.

Earlier this week, London-based non-governmental organisation Hong Kong Watch said in a report that “red capital” - money originating from mainland China - had fundamentally shaped Hong Kong’s politics, media and the city’s status as a business hub.

In 2019, 82% of IPOs in Hong Kong were by mainland companies, while in October 2020, mainland equities comprised 57.3% of the Hang Seng Index by weighting, the group said. (Reuters)

Mar. 4 - The European Union has suspended its support for development projects in Myanmar to avoid providing financial assistance to the military who seized power last month, officials said on Thursday.

The 27-nation bloc informed a committee of the World Trade Organization on Thursday that it had put on hold all development cooperation that would support the military authorities, a Geneva-based trade official said.

The European Commission, the EU executive, confirmed it had put on hold the budgetary support, which has typically gone to schools, elections and rural development and is worth hundreds of millions of euros over several years. (Reuters)

Mar. 4 -  Indonesia will issue a regulation to prevent predatory pricing on e-commerce platforms, including for Chinese goods, a minister said on Thursday, as President Joko Widodo urged consumers in Southeast Asia’s biggest market to shun imported products.

“Calls to love our own products, Indonesian products, must be echoed. I also campaign for hatred towards products coming from abroad,” Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, said during a trade ministry event.

“Love our goods, hate foreign goods,” he said, without naming any country.

Trade minister Muhammad Lutfi told a news briefing Jokowi’s remarks were in response to concern that Chinese manufacturers were copying products designed by small and medium-sized Indonesian enterprises and selling them on foreign e-commerce platforms at a fraction of the price, crushing local producers.

Lutfi said artificial intelligence was used to identify the best sellers and it was difficult to raise a complaint to the World Trade Organization because of the use of digital platforms, which obscures the origin of 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 trading,” he said without elaborating.

Last year, Indonesia lowered the threshold at which it begins to impose import taxes on consumer goods sold via e-commerce to reduce overseas shipments, especially those coming from China.

China is Indonesia’s biggest trade partner and a major investor, but Jakarta has complained of a persistently large trade deficit. The average annual deficit in merchandise trade in the past six years was $14 billion, according to Indonesian trade ministry data.

Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi in January told Chinese State Councillor Wang Yi during a visit to Jakarta that China should remove trade barriers for products like palm oil, fisheries and fruit to help address the trade imbalance. Wang then pledged to expand Beijing’s imports from Indonesia and increase investment. (Reuters)

Mar. 4 - United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet called on Ethiopia on Thursday to grant U.N. monitors access to the Tigray region to investigate reports of continuing killings and sexual violence that may amount to war crimes.

In a statement, she said that multiple parties to the conflict had been identified as possible perpetrators, including the Ethiopian National Defence Forces, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, Eritrean armed forces, and Amhara regional forces and allied militia. (Reuters)