Assalamualaikum wr.wb.

Good morning everyone.

Honorable judges and all my friend whom I love.
My name is Zahra Lailatul Rizky and I'm from Senior High School 2 Pare
First of all, I would like to thank unto Allah SWT who has given us mercies and
blesses so we can attend and gather in this nice place with good condition and
happy situation.
Secondly, may solawat and salam always be sent to our prophet Muhammad SAW
who has guided us from the darkness to the brightness, from the stupidity to the
cleverness, namely Islam.
Today, I would like to deliver my speech with the title "Is Indonesia Ready For
Free Trade?"
Ladies and gentlemen
I'm sure that everybody here is familiar with the word "free trade". But what is free
trade? Free trade is policy followed by international markets in which countries'
goverment do not restrict imports and export. With free trade, then the process of
moving goods or services among countries will be free from import and export
taxes.
Many countries have free trade agreements. In Asia, there are Asia Pasific
Economic Cooperation known as APEC, and then ASEAN Free Trade Area known
as AFTA, and ASEAN Economic Comunity known as AEC.

Today many Chinese-made and Japanese-made goods are circulating in Indonesia.

You must be familiar, right? Cellphones, televisions, toys, and many more give
negative impact for Indonesia. Because free trade will make the companies
bankrupt, imported goods become cheaper, the volume of imported goods spend
foreign exchange and make the exchange rate to be difficult to strengthen.
Companies also tend to restrain production costs through efficient use of labor and
equipment, so job security labor become fragile and unemployment rate "swelled"
again. Though the industrial sector is the second largest after agriculture, this
situation likely becomes disease that can cause risk Indonesia's economic
fundamental.
Ladies and gentlemen.
By those facts, the question is, is Indonesia ready for free trade?
There are so many react resulted by that statement. Some people think Indonesia is
ready to set foot towards free trade. But other people think that Indonesia is still not
ready. And I think also, Indonesia is still not ready for free trade.
Why?
Many obstacle barriers, Indonesia moves to free trade. Like the conservative way
of thinking and weak mentality. Free trade market requires us to be creative,
innovative, and have a strong soul that not sluggish. If we dont venture out of the
box, we will be walking in place and lagging far behind other countries. Another
case is, Indonesia is a country with high birth rate and low mortality rate. This
causes various problems. One of them is poverty. It is countless how many time
buskers and beggars being caught by municipal police. In fact, some of them are
school-age. But the question is, why are they not in school? The answer is because

they don't have money to pay school. Ironic aren't they? Only certain people who
have good skills, like engineers, architects, accountant, and others. Seeing these
cases, do we still believe that Indonesia is ready?
But, beside those obstacles, as an Indonesian people, we must prepare ourselves for
free trade from now. We must break the obstacles behind. So Indonesia can be a
great country in industries, economies, and other sectors.
I think there are some solutions for us to prepare ourselves for free trade. Those are:
1. The government must prepare the domestic industries to be more
competitive. The industries must prepare themselves too. But how?
Improving quality of the products, repairing the finance and marketing
system of the company. If those "upgrading" programs are successful, I think
Indonesia is ready enough for free trade.

2. Be open-minded. Nowadays, free trade looks has many ways to get profits.
Conservative people will consider that free trade kills local product. But if
we could be open-minded, free trade will help us develop the local products.

Last but not least

3. Study hard. As a student we must study hard to reach our dreams. Anyone
here who doesn't have a dream? I'm sure that all of us have a dream. Like,
what you will do in the future? What you want to be?
If you have a big dream, prepare yourself now!
In this era, engineers, accountants, and architects are the most wanted job by other
countries in free trade. If we want Indonesia compete in free trade, we must prepare
ourselves from now. For example, if you want to be an engineer, enter vocational
school so you could learn how to be a good engineer. If you want to be an
accountant, follow economic olympiad, enter social program or cooperation in
school. So if we could do the best in our passion, we could compete with other
people.
So, ladies and gentlemen.
Indonesia is a rich-developing country. It has many potential, in natural resources
and human resources. If we could manage the natural resources such as forestry,
agriculture, sea wealth and control the human resources to break the obstacles like I
have told you before. Then Indonesia is ready for free trading. In Asia, even in the
world, Indonesia could be the great country.
Well, ladies and gentlemen. That's all my speech. I do apologize for any mistakes.
And the last I say
Assalamualaikum wr.wb