Indonesia and Australia: Stepping Forward to Greater Engagement in Competition Policy and Law.

In February 2017, the country Leaders of Indonesia and Australia initiate their formal meeting and had made bilateral commitments about improving “people to people contact” in many aspects of cooperation, including economics, education, culture, and politics. Thus on 19th April 2017, KPPU conducted a bilateral discussion with Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on enforcement of competition law and cooperation at ACCC Branch Office in Sydney, Australia.

The discussion was also conducted in the margin of fostering the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA), which has been mandated by both countries Leaders to be concluded by the end of 2017.

During his remarks, Chairman of KPPU, Dr. Syarkawi Rauf, stated that the international trading activity between countries and or regions will be escalated, most importantly through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and IA-CEPA. Both agreements consider important to increase trade and investment relations between both countries and regions, and competition policy and law play significant part in affecting the outcome of such agreement. Thus, it is the competition agencies task to initiate discussion in compromising mutual and important features without prejudice to the future outcome of the negotiation.

In his response, Chairman of ACCC, Mr. Rod Sims, also agreed with the idea of further cooperation between KPPU and ACCC and they are willing to explore similar interest of both agencies that could be escalated to a form of cooperation initiative.