Abstract
The book under review is the fifth of seven volume series published under the auspices of the World Bank containing the foreign trade libera-lization experiences of three countries — Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The series contains experiences of nineteen countries of three major regions — Latin America, Asia and the Pacific and the Mediterranean. Editors take the benefits of open trading for granted and set the objective of each country study as how has it achieved trade liberalization. Various distinct periods of liberalization are identified in each study which are termed as "liberalization episodes". A subjective index of liberalization is constructed for each country which shows "a rough and ready measure of liberalization perceived by the author of the country study in question". Liberalization episodes are analysed by posing various questions to assess their success. II:1110f the book is devoted to the Indonesian case study and the remaining half is divided between Pakistan and Sri Lanka studies. In the Indonesian case study, Mark M. Pitt traces "one of the most complex and volatile" trade regimes of the world. He identifies five per-iods in the progress of Indonesian economic policy; Colonial Dutch regime ending in 1949 with Indonesian independence, period of constitutional democracy, Sukarno's "Guided Economy" of 1958-65, dramatic liberalization period of 1966-71 and the post liberalization period. Post World War II and pre-independence period resulted in extensive foreign exchange and price controls which were more pervasive than be-fore. Import licencess were distributed on the basis of historical rights re-suiting in severe discrimination against Indonesian firms which received not more than 10 per cent of import foreign exchange. Post independence period naturally resulted in a policy of awarding import licences in a different manner. Benteng system of importing reserved a share of import foreign exchange for ethnic Indonesians which resulted in corruption.
Riazuddin. (1988) Liberalizing foreign trade: Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, (Basil Blackwell Ltd, UK, 1991), Pakistan Journal of Applied Economics, Volume-07, Issue-2.
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