Technical Assistance II
Trade in Services (TiS) has been the new subject for Hanum Nareswari for the last two years. She was a fresh graduate when she joined the Directorate of Trade in Services Negotiation (DPPJ in Indonesian acronyms) at the Ministry of Trade (MoT) as Trade Analyst in February 2021. Although she gets the hang of her job, she is still thirsty for knowledge to keep up to speed. Therefore, she got very excited when she was selected to participate in specialised training in the analysis of trade in services organised by DPPJ with support from ARISE+ Indonesia.
The comprehensive course comprised three sets of workshops. In addition to the training, ARISE+ Indonesia also facilitated a comprehensive analysis of six service sectors providing an overview of the selected service sectors and their contribution to the Indonesian economy. The training participants contributed to the report through working group assignments and mentoring. The six selected service sectors were the higher education sector, professional services sector, maritime transport sector, environmental services sector, computer services sector, and games and animation services sector.
The capacity-building programme aimed to strengthen the analytical capacity of MoT's trade analysts and trade negotiators to evaluate the impact of policy changes in trade in services, thus enhancing Indonesia's capacity to negotiate the EU-Indonesia CEPA.
The capacity-building activities for MoT were led by ARISE+ Indonesia Trade and Investment Senior Expert Widdi Mugijayani and delivered in cooperation with International Economics Consulting (IEC) led by Paul Baker.
Hanum felt grateful for taking part in the three insightful training workshops. In the first workshop on 6-10 June 2022, Hanum learned a comprehensive overview and frameworks on trade in services from both economic and legal perspectives at the multilateral and bilateral levels.
"The training helped me deepen my theoretical knowledge, which is important to lay a strong foundation," Hanum said.
The second workshop on 21-24 June 2022 provided Hanum with the understanding and skills to analyse and interpret international trade in services data, including the categorisation and sources of TiS statistics, analytical methods and indexes for TiS analysis, TiS in conjunction with GVCs, and measuring the impact of TiS agreements.
As the Trade Analyst, Hanum's duties include contributing to negotiation documents and preparing text analysis of Indonesia's negotiation position. The implementation of her duties involves finding data and making analyses. Before the training, Hanum could only provide simple data comparisons. Furthermore, finding a data source for trade in services takes a lot of work for her since the data is not readily available. Therefore, the insights gained from the workshop on collecting and analysing the trade in services data were valuable and the most relevant to ease the implementation of her day-to-day tasks.
"Now I know where and how to find data sources for trade in services efficiently and how to put together a more elaborate analysis," Hanum said.
Following the second workshop, the participants were divided into six working groups and assigned to develop an analysis of the six services sector that would be presented in the third workshop. Hanum, with four of her training colleagues, one of whom from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, were assigned to analyse the higher education sector mentored by Ms Widdi. The other five working groups were mentored by Paul Baker, Pablo Quiles, Zahra Beeharry, Loan Thi Hong Le, Ria Roy, and Smita Bheenick, the International Economic Consulting team across the world.
The third workshop, on 28 November - 1 December 2022, provided the participant working groups with the opportunity to present their analysis reports of the six selected sectors. The trainers also discussed approaches to trade in services negotiations by the EU in previous trade agreements and the way forward for preparing CEPA negotiations with the EU in these six service sectors.
The working group assignment and final workshop has enriched Hanum's knowledge of trade in services and excelled her skills in collecting data, conducting analyses, drafting reports and delivering presentations. Hanum extended her gratitude and appreciation to ARISE+ Indonesia and the trainer team for the capacity-building, excellent training delivery and supportive mentoring.
"I hope my enhanced analytical capacity could support better preparation of trade in services negotiation to advance Indonesia's services trade," Hanum said in a hopeful tone.
