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Discourse: Germany, Indonesia can link up to strengthen ‘momentum for change’
The Jakarta Post sits down with Germany’s new Ambassador to Indonesia, Ina Lepel, to discuss the prospects of a multilateral partnership between the two countries.
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German Ambassador to Indonesia Ina Lepel sits down with 'The Jakarta Post' to discuss German-Indonesian cooperation under the latter's G20 presidency in 2022. (Courtesy of German Foreign Ministry/-)
Gem>Germany’s new Ambassador to Indonesia Ina Lepel arrives in Indonesia at an opportune time – just as Indonesia begins its year-long presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) biggest economies and the Group of Seven (G7) is led by Germany. The envoy sat down with The Jakarta Post’s Dian Septiari to discuss the prospects of the partners’ bilateral relations and how they can work together to advance the multilateral order and address global challenges. The following are excerpts from the interview:
Question: What are the key issues in the Indonesia-Germany bilateral relationship?
Answer: Indonesia is one of a very small number of global partners for our developing programs, which does not mean we do more projects anymore but we do big projects and they are all aimed at serving pressing global issues together.
At the moment, they are geared particularly toward climate change, carbon transformation and preserving biodiversity. A lot of our cooperation is dealing with these questions.
We also have a very active private sector. I’m very proud of what our companies are doing because they appreciate Indonesia as a venue for this cooperation.
It’s a very big market, it's an emerging market, and so of course I would like to see even more of that. But there’s also a lot of competition for the available investment from the private sectors of other countries, [...] so here we also have to work on how to bridge the gaps.
On people-to-people diplomacy and cultural relations, I’m very happy that we have between 4,000 and 5,000 Indonesian students that are pursuing their university studies in Germany, plus we have an increasing number of young Indonesians who have their vocational training in Germany. This is another field where we are proud to have Indonesians go to Germany. Hopefully, once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, we’ll also again have more students and young researchers from Germany coming to Indonesia.
