B

razilian President Michel Temer is set to visit Indonesia next month on his first extensive tour of Southeast Asia, a senior envoy has revealed, as the Latin American nation seeks to tap into ASEAN’s promising growth.

Temer is expected to meet President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Jan. 12 for consultations on trade and other things, Brazilian Ambassador to Indonesia Rubem AC Barbosa said during a panel discussion on Wednesday.

“The president […] will also be going to Vietnam, Singapore and Timor Leste,” Barbosa told The Jakarta Post on the margins of a “Talking ASEAN” event at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta.

Another embassy official said that President Temer would be leading a delegation of 40 businesspeople in hopes of striking some deals, although he did not elaborate.

Generally, the few deals with Latin American countries tend to be blamed on geographic distance and language barriers, even with Jakarta’s announcement at the outset of this year that South America was high on the list of regions for exploring untapped “nontraditional” markets. Two-way trade between Indonesia and South America’s largest country has been steadily decreasing from a five-year high of US$4.05 billion in 2014.

The outlook looks dim for the year’s end, as the value of trade in the first six months of 2017 fell to $2.1 billion from $2.51 billion in the same period last year. The Trade Ministry recorded a total trade balance of $3.5 billion in 2016, with Brazil enjoying the surplus.

A disruption in diplomatic relations in 2015 caused by Indonesia’s execution of a Brazilian citizen on drug charges has been blamed for slowing trade, but Barbosa said is mostly slowed because Brazil buys manufactured goods and sells primary resources. However, he said the leadership in Brasilia is ushering in change.

“We are eager to be here for business; Indonesia needs lots of protein and we are strong producers of agricultural goods,” the envoy said.

Representing Brazil as the president of Mercado Común del Sur (Mercosur), South America’s own regional organization, Temer is expected to visit the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta to meet with the secretary-general, Barbosa said.

ASEAN and Mercosur are the largest regional organizations in the developing world, both with large populations and economies.

Even with a collective gross domestic product (GDP) of $3.3 trillion, Mercosur only contributes 1.6 percent to global trade, compared the 7.1 percent ASEAN contributes with a combined GDP of $2.4 trillion.

“We can learn from you, intertwine. The more your markets expand in terms of numbers and the increase in middle class, the more opportunities we see derived from that,” the Brazilian diplomat told the panel.

Meanwhile, Argentinian Ambassador to Indonesia Ricardo Luis Bocalandro, also on the panel, argued that South American leaders should make a strategic decision to open the region up to globalization.

“We are now in a very special moment in the world situation,” Bocalandro said. “The integration process is there working and it’s promising and [amidst global uncertainty] we need to make a decision: Do we want to go protectionist or open up?”

The first formal ASEAN-Mercosur ministerial meeting was held in Brasilia in November 2008, which facilitated in-depth discussions on ways to enhance interregional cooperation, but despite the early promise of cooperation, relations between the two organizations have stalled.