22 Apr 2016
Jakarta Post
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has invited the Netherlands to invest in Indonesian infrastructure projects, particularly those that support Jokowi’s maritime sector development program. During his meeting with Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte in The Hague on Friday last week, Jokowi expressed his appreciation for the Netherlands’ support of Indonesia’s maritime axis vision. “I invite Dutch companies to be involved in the construction of deep sea ports in eastern Indonesia,” Jokowi said in a statement issued by the Presidential communications team. The maritime axis plan, first announced during Jokowi’s 2014 presidential election campaign, aims to boost fisheries, ship construction, infrastructure and marine resource clusters as well as human-resource capacity building through vocational training programs. Jokowi said several Dutch companies had previously invested in maritime infrastructure projects, such as the seaport projects in Kuala Tanjung and Tanjung Priok.”I invite the Netherlands to participate in maritime infrastructure projects in Indonesia, namely Sorong deep sea port and Makassar deep seaport,” he added. He also stated that the Netherlands was one of Indonesia’s main partners in trade and investment in Europe. However, the value of bilateral trade has shown a decline recently. In 2014, the trade value reached US$ 4.89 billion, while in 2015 it was only $ 4.22 billion. Likewise, investment from the Netherlands’ in Indonesia also declined from $1.31 billion in 2015 to $1.73 billion in 2014. Jokowi said that to make Indonesian economy more open and competitive, the government had launched 11 packages of regulatory and economic reform, including a one-stop service at the Investment Coordination Board (BKPM ) and a negative investment list updates.