VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) urged Indonesian ambassadors and diplomats for foreign countries to direct their focus on economic diplomacy since it is viewed as being direly required by Indonesia. The head of state made the request at the opening ceremony of the work meeting of the chief delegation with the Foreign Affairs Ministry at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta, Thursday.

"We want all focus to be on economic diplomacy. Some 70 to 80 percent of what we have concerns that matter since that is what we need for now," Jokowi emphasized.

Hence, it is crucial that the ambassadors play their roles as investment envoys, for which they need to acknowledge investment opportunities as a future projection.

"The first one is the field related to commodities or products for import substitutions," Jokowi remarked.

For instance, Petrokimia’s fertilizer product, of which 85 percent is still imported. Hence, some opportunities still exist to boost investment in that field.

The president also reiterated the need to find investors for processing raw materials since to this end Indonesia has abundant resources.

To conduct economic diplomacy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has compiled several strategic steps including capitalizing on the strengthening of the Indonesian domestic market.

"Indonesia is a vast market with more than 260 million people. We need to take this as leverage in establishing mutually beneficial economic cooperation at the bilateral, regional and global levels," Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi said earlier this week.

Another issue that Indonesia needs to be on the lookout for, is protecting the domestic market from products that enter the market illegally or by dumping, or foreign subsidies – as a result of the current low global economic growth, she said. (ANTARA)