D

span class="inline inline-left">David Taylor (JP/Wendra Ajisetyatama)New Zealand Ambassador to Indonesia and ASEAN David Taylor will soon end his 2010-2014 tenure. The ambassador talks to The Jakarta Post's Ida Indawati Khouw about his experience, which he sums up in a tagline, 'Maju Bersama' (Advancing Together, Indonesia and New Zealand). Here is the excerpt.

Question: As your tenure ends, what is your message to New Zealanders about Indonesia?

Answer: There is no better time than now to get engaged with Indonesia, to do new things and to explore opportunities.

People here are looking to make stronger international connections.

Indonesians are traveling much more than ever before. There were about 7,000 Indonesians who came to New Zealand in 2010. Today that number is around 14,000. We now have a tourism office in Jakarta

On the other side, in 2010 there were about 38,000 New Zealanders coming to Indonesia. Last year that number increased to 66,000.

In the business sector, we did business missions to Makassar [South Sulawesi], Surabaya [East Java], Bandung [West Java] and Jakarta this year.

For the month of August this year, two-way trade with Indonesia was valued at NZ$124 million, a 6.4 percent rise from August 2013.

In the year that ended August 2014, two-way trade stood at NZ$1.8 billion, up NZ$152 million (9.2 percent) from August 2013.

Is this New Zealand's new paradigm of embracing Asia?

It is true that once upon a time New Zealand looked more to the UK and to Europe because they were the countries we had the colonial relationships with. But when the UK went to the European common market, it became clear that we wouldn't get the same kind of preferential treatment that we had with Britain.

Things are changing incredibly fast. Asia and the Americas rose very much in terms of importance. China is now our largest trading partner. Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan are all important trading partners.

Mandarin and Japanese are getting popular and Bahasa Indonesia is being taught in schools, too. Asians now comprise around 12 percent of the New Zealand population That changes relationships in Asia.

New Zealand is getting omnipresent here. Your agricultural and dairy products are everywhere as the result of your sophisticated strategy to introduce them to the Indonesian diet.

We want to sell the things we are good at and if you want to do that you've got to think about how to fit in to the local market. [In the kiwifruit industry,] Zespri International has really done that, [while in the dairy sector,] Fonterra Cooperative Group has done the same thing. The company will open a new packaging plant near Jakarta in early 2015. It is the largest investment made in such a facility in Southeast Asia in over a decade.

But President Joko Widodo wants to encourage Indonesians to consume more local produce. What do you say about this?

We don't have a problem at all with the effort to improve local production and increase productivity and we try to help where we can.

Indonesia faces challenges in food security. Around 38 percent of Indonesian kids are stunted because a large proportion of the population is consuming less than 80 percent of the recommended daily protein intake.

For example, Indonesia's per capita beef consumption is about 2 kg per year. In New Zealand it's over 30 kg, while in Malaysia it's about 14 kg. Indonesia falls well below regional and international consumption standards. Increased consumption of beef, a good source of protein, is good for health and development of the brain.

The new administration's focus on the maritime sector should help boost protein available in fish. But local production is not going to be sufficient for many years.

With population growth of around 2 percent per annum, that's close to 5 million extra people to feed each and every year. New Zealand is a willing protein partner for Indonesia.

How do you describe your mission here?

We have created a relationship architecture that didn't exist before, under the tagline 'Maju Bersama'. We describe what we have been doing as lifting up, strengthening together.

We have done cultural things involving New Zealand films and musicians, [made] MoUs on police education, agriculture, geothermal [energy], labor, environment, disaster management, food safety and we have appointed a board management staff for tourism.

With the intention of strengthening connections, we have created honorary consuls in Surabaya and Bali.

Indonesia receives New Zealand's largest bilateral aid allocation in the Asian region. The figure reaches NZ$100 million every five years.