I

ndonesia is set to participate in the upcoming G7 outreach meeting in Ise-Shima, Japan, a sideline meeting of the summit of G7 major economies, during President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s two-day visit to Japan on Thursday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has invited Indonesia, along with a number of heads of state and government of other non-G7 countries, including Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and leaders from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Asian Development Bank (ADB), to take part in the outreach meeting, which is set for Friday.

The meeting will have two discussion sessions, which are aimed at exploring ways to sustain the well-being of Asia and the global development agenda known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“President Jokowi will be one of the keynote speakers in the first session,” Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said on Tuesday at the State Palace in Jakarta after she reported to Jokowi on Indonesia’s preparation for the visit.

Beginda Pakpahan, an international political and economic analyst at the University of Indonesia (UI), said Japan’s invitation to the outreach meeting showed that Indonesia had a significant role as “a relevantly emerging economy among developing countries”.

“Major economies are expected to help ease the current global economic slowdown. While countries like Indonesia also have roles in improving the regional economy,” Beginda said.

Indonesia, he added, was also involved in shaping the SDGs, particularly since the Millennium Development Goal process.

Stable regional politics would also spur the economy and eventually help achieve the SDGs, he said.

Inviting non-G7 members depends on the country holding the G7 presidency. Last year, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari attended the meeting in Bavaria following an invitation from Germany.

On the sidelines of the outreach meeting, Jokowi is also set to hold bilateral meetings with numerous leaders, including Japan’s Abe, French President Francois Hollande and Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, said Retno.

Hideaki Ohmura, the governor of Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, has also requested a courtesy-call meeting with Jokowi.

Japan is one of the largest investors in Indonesia although the ties have been strained recently particularly after Japan’s failure to win the head-to-head competition with China for Indonesia’s first high-speed train project late last year.

Japan, however, later expressed an interest in financing the development of the new deep-sea port project in Patimban, Subang, West Java.

Jokowi and Abe met in a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur last year where the two reaffirmed their commitment to solid bilateral cooperation.

Other than talks on infrastructure projects, ASEAN will also be one of the topics during the meeting between Abe and Jokowi.

Abe is expected to ask Indonesia to play a key role in maintaining ASEAN unity after China reached a four-point consensus with Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia and Laos on the South China Sea issue.

In 1993, in his capacity as leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, then president Soeharto met with then Japanese PM Kiichi Miyazawa, who was G7 president, before the G7 summit proper.

The meeting was held to express the wish of some 50 developing countries to settle their debts with the major economies in order to support their development.
_____________________________________