JAKARTA (TheInsiderStories) - President of Republic Indonesia Joko Widodo has established the so-called “focal point” which will be responsible to deal with diplomatic issues on economy with a number of Indonesian key trading partners. The President has appointed Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi as coordinator of the team.
In general, Minister Marsudi’s main work is to coordinate follow-up actions of the economic agreements with different government bodies at the home country and in Indonesia’s trading partners. The minister will also tackle political aspect of the agreements.
Minister for National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) Sofyan Djalil, said, the President has assigned a minister to be the focal point to all countries that have large investments in the country.
“As an example, I will cover Japan, Tom (Minister of Trade Thomas Lembong) for Europe and Rudiantara (Minister for Information Technology and Information will handle the US,” he said.
The ministers, he said, will help investors to solve problems arising from the g-to-g (government-to-government) agreements. At present, it often takes too long to execute the agreements into concrete actions as well as the b-to-b (business-to-business) agreements, he added.
Hence, Minister Marsudi expects to tackle the barriers that might halt the execution process by consulting both, fellow Indonesian ministers and the counterparts abroad.
The cabinet ministers under the economic diplomacy’s coordinator included 10 ministers and two heads of national bodies.
Members of Economic Diplomatic team are as follows:
- Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Sudirman Said to deal Middle East issues
- Minister of National Development Plan Sofyan Djalil for Japan
- Minister of State-owned Enterprises Rini Seomarno for China
- Minsiter of Maritime and Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti for Russia
- Minister of Trade Thomas Lembong for Europe and Australia
- Minister of Transportation Ignasius Jonan for India
- Coordinating Minister of Politic Law and Defense Luhut Pandjaitan has been assigned to cover Singapore
- Coordinating Minister of Maritime Rizal Ramli for Malaysia
- Minister of Communication and Informatics Rudiantara to the US and Latin American countries
- Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman is to cover Thailand, Vietnam and other Asian countries other than Singapore and Malaysia
- Head of National Investment Coordinating Board Franky Sibarani is assigned to handle trade issues with Hongkong
- Head of Creative Economy Board Triawan Munaf has been assigned to cover South Korea.