Zubair Qureshi
The Online Internship Programme on the Contemporary Dynamic of Indonesia which is a joint collaboration of the Indonesian Embassy and the Bahria University, Islamabad, held its Session-8 on Thursday with Dr Poppy Winanti as the keynote speaker on “Indonesia and Regional Economic Integration.”
“ASEAN makes South East Asia even more appealing for commerce and investment for countries outside the region by creating an integrated market of 623 million people” Dr. Winanti underlined while examining the Indonesian regional economic integration as a development strategy.
The speaker examined the proliferation of Free Trade Agreements in the region and the scope of how ASEAN members could benefit from the recently adopted Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which in addition to ASEAN member countries also included China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.
“Indonesia was 16th in terms of GDP, 27th in total exports and 30th in total imports economy in the world” the speaker said while highlighting Indonesia’s economic features.
In her presentation, she also shared statistics on the top exports of Indonesia that include Coal Briquettes $28.4 B, Palm Oil $27.3B, Petroleum Gas $8.B, Ferroalloys $7B and Large Flat-Rolled Stainless Steel $6.6B.
Regarding Indonesian imports, She informed that the top imports of Indonesia included Refined Petroleum $14.5B, Crude Petroleum $6.3B, Petroleum Gas $4.2B, Vaccines, Blood, Antisera, Toxins and Culture $3.4B and Motor Vehicle parts and accessories #3.19B.
Dr. Winanti continued that Indonesia’s top export destinations were China $54.5B, United States $26.5B, Japan $18B, India $14.5 and Singapore $13B. About the Indonesia’s top import origin she mentioned that it was led by China with $60.4B and followed by Singapore $18.4, Japan $13.2B, Malaysia $9.5B and United States S $9.6B.
Enlightening the participants, the guest speaker went into details and stated that RTA has more flexibility as compared to large multilateral trade negotiations as it allows like-minded countries or interested countries to decide to establish among themselves a common set of rights and obligations to deal with a particular subject matter or sector.
“A deeper integration is much easier at the regional level than it is at the multilateral level and RTA’s are deemed as the better place to achieve consensus for sets of rules that cannot be accomplished within the WTO framework” Dr. Winanti observed.
Regarding the strategies to gain the benefits of RTA, the speaker said they were two pronged, namely offensive and defensive.
