T

he Kazakhstan mission in Indonesia is hoping to jumpstart an already established bilateral joint commission for economic cooperation by hosting its second session in July this year.

Kazakhstan’s ambassador to Indonesia, Askhat Orazbay, said the joint commission was to be headed by Indonesia’s Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution and Kazakhstan’s Minister of National Economy Timur Suleimenov.

He said the first session had taken place in Jakarta and plans for the next one were being considered by the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister.

“Hopefully we can organize it; then it will coordinate all issues including tourism, education, culture, trade, transport and investment. This is a very important event, and if it happens, it will help to push further bilateral contact and cooperation in different fields,” Orazbay told reporters in a press briefing in Jakarta on Monday.

He said the volume of trade between the two countries was “unfortunately” not very big because of the distance between them and the high transportation costs, as Kazakhstan was a landlocked country.

“If we want to transport goods to Indonesia, we have to transport on railways to the nearest ports […] either through Russia, China, or Iran,” he said.

He said as a big producer of wheat, Kazakhstan was seeking ways to export the commodity to Indonesia. “Indonesia is willing to buy because the quality is good, but the problem is the transportation cost,” he said.

According to Trade Map data, Indonesia mainly imports wheat from Australia, with the trade worth US$852 million in 2016, followed by Ukraine and Canada. Indonesia’s total wheat imports were worth $2.4 billion in 2016.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan has mainly exported wheat to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Russia, its neighboring countries, with total worldwide exports worth $685 million in 2016.

In order to tackle the problem caused by being landlocked, Orazbay said, Kazakhstan has cooperated with China in building railway networks to the Lianyungang Port on the east coast of China. From the port, Kazakhstan would be able to export to other countries including Indonesia, as it would be cheaper than directly exporting from Kazakhstan.

Conversely, he said, the value of imports from Indonesia to Kazakhstan was also very small. “Indonesia can export palm oil, tropical fruits and rubber, which we don’t have,” he said.

He said Kazakhstan had not set a specific target for trade between the two countries. “The amount is not very much important; what’s important is to create conditions to make trade possible,” he said, adding that Indonesian companies like the producers of instant noodles, macaroni and bread would be able to use his country’s main commodity.

Kazakhstan is currently a non-permanent member of the United Nation Security Council. In January this year, Kazakhstan was the Security Council president and it focused on security issues on the Korean Peninsula and in Central Asia, especially the crisis in
Afghanistan.

As Indonesia has been campaigning to take over Kazakhstan’s seat for next period, Orazbay said the two countries did not have any dispute and hopefully Kazakhstan would support Indonesia because the two had a very friendly relations in general.

“We only have friendly relations,” he said. “We support each other economically try to cooperate despite long distance and objective obstacles.”