Govt seeks to bolster economic diplomacy

The Foreign Ministry is having its biggest annual gathering in Jakarta, where over the course of a week, a total of 85 ambassadors will hear directives from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his team on how diplomacy should respond to the present geopolitical instability and the potentially deteriorating global economy.

Wednesday saw the league of envoys spending long hours listening to members of the President’s economic team.

Deputy Finance Minister Mahendra Siregar said the gathering was necessary to prepare Indonesian envoys amid an era of great uncertainty. The government, he said, expected not only to brief the envoys, but also to learn and implement ideas from them.

“Indonesia used to be a nation that exported raw materials, but now the government is focused on increasing foreign direct investment in the manufacturing industry, processing centers, and on producing consumer products to meet rapidly growing demand,” Mahendra said.

The challenge, he said, was to come up with the necessary prerequisites to produce finished products and market them domestically or abroad.

Coordinating Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa said the ambassadors could serve the critical role of luring foreign participation in big projects to realize the government’s Master Plan for the Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesian Economic Growth (MP3EI).

“We expect ambassadors to be able to conduct large-scale economic diplomacy, so that they can lure more and more investment into Indonesia,” he said after meeting the ambassadors at the Foreign Ministry’s Gedung Pancasila building.

Separately, Yudhoyono’s foreign affairs spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said the ambassadors would meet with the President on Thursday.

Teuku said that during the meeting, Yudhoyono would give his directives to prepare programs to anticipate the geopolitical outlook and the global economic crisis.

“The President will expect ambassadors to strengthen their diplomatic operations, so that their performance abroad will help the country achieve its goals on a global scale,” Teuku told The Jakarta Post.

“This gathering is important because it gives the chance to communicate our development priority targets, how our representatives abroad can fully grasp our strengths and how to combine our competitive edge with international development,” he added.

Teuku added that Yudhoyono would also highlight the importance of investment as an instrument for Indonesia to achieve its economic goals.

“In the current economic turmoil, which potentially leads to global contraction, it is our duty to search for new ventures and opportunities,” he said.

Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said Indonesia would keep increasing the number of its representative offices abroad. In 2011, 11 new representative offices of Indonesia were opened and came into operation in a number of countries.