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n line with their fast-growing economies, two of Asia’s rising economic powerhouses, India and Indonesia, expect to enhance their economic cooperation to meet a trade target of US$25 billion by 2015.

Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu said that India would continue to be one of Indonesia’s key trade partners in the future, especially during the economic slowdown at present.

“Our strengthening relationship will also help us face the more turbulent years ahead in the world economy given our large respective domestic markets,” she said at the closing of the first bilateral trade ministers’ forum on Tuesday.

During the two-day forum, the Indonesian and Indian delegations held a pre-negotiation consultation on the Indonesia India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (II-CECA), and discussed, among other things, trade barriers to products, such as beef, medicine, food, seeds of areca nut, and the problem of tariff structures.

At the closing session, East Kalimantan Governor Awang Faroek Ishak signed a memorandum of understanding with the executive director of India’s state-owned aluminum firm National Aluminium Company Ltd. (Nalco), PK Mohapatra, which plans to build a $4 billion smelter in East Kutai with a production capacity of 500,000 tons per year. Nalco will also build a power plant with output of 1,250 megawatts.

Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, who led the Indian delegation, said that bilateral economic cooperation in terms of trade and investment had grown satisfactorily.

“We have come to Indonesia with substantial investment in infrastructure sectors, ranging from railways to power generation, textiles and smelteries, and [a further] $25 billion worth of investment is in the pipeline,” he said. “There is great potential as well as mutual opportunities that we can explore.”

According to the Central Statistics Agency, bilateral trade was valued at $13.20 billion last year, making India Indonesia’s seventh-largest trading partner. The figure was $8.9 billion in the first half of this year, a 55.03 percent increase from the $5.79 billion during the same period in 2010.

India ranked 16th in the foreign investors’ list, with $35.3 million in 37 projects during the first half of this year.

Indonesian exports to India include palm oil and its derivatives; palm kernel; coal; briquettes; copper ore; copra; and chemical wood, while imports include petroleum oil; transmission applications for radio-telephony; trucks; and cyclic hydrocarbons.

Sharma said India would continue to buy commodities from Indonesia to maintain its growth and sustain its food security, including palm oil, of which exports reached $7.5 billion last year. He said that the government did not plan to raise the import duty on Indonesia’s palm oil.

Indian industry has called on its government to increase the import duty on palm oil, especially refined palm olein, from 7.73 percent to 16.5 percent, following a lowering of export duty by Indonesia.

Earlier on Sept. 16, Pakistan and Indonesia signed an agreement on preferential trade, which will come into effect in January.