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Nobody should be forcing anybody to take sides: UK ambassador
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UK Ambassador to Indonesia and Timor-Leste Dominic Jermy (left) speaks on Jan. 10, 2023, to The Jakarta Post chief editor M. Taufiqurrahman (right) during a visit. (The Jakarta Post/Deni Ghifari)
T
he United Kingdom’s recently appointed Ambassador to Indonesia and Timor-Leste Dominic Jermey has said the UK will not urge Indonesia to pick sides as Western countries and China drift apart.
“Nobody should be forcing anybody to take sides. […] I absolutely respect the right of Indonesia to be aktif dan bebas,” the ambassador said on Wednesday, referring in Indonesian to Jakarta’s long-standing “free and active” foreign policy position.
That included the investment invitation the archipelago extended to Chinese businesses, Jermey clarified during his first visit to The Jakarta Post after he took office in October last year.
Indonesia has been forging economic ties with China – its biggest trade partner – for a long time, be it in investment for infrastructure and industrial projects or in trade.
China accounted for more than 25 percent of Indonesian exports excluding oil and gas and 33 percent of imports from January to November last year, according to the latest available data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS).
As such, it played a bigger role in Indonesian external trade than all ASEAN countries combined. Slightly under 19 percent of Indonesian exports went to ASEAN, while 17 percent of imports were sourced from countries of the regional trade block in the same eleven-month period.
China accounted for the second largest amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Indonesia, with around US$1.8 billion coming in from the mainland and another $1.7 billion from Hong Kong in the third quarter of 2023, second only to Singapore’s $4.4 billion, according to data released by the Investment Ministry in October.
