Indonesia’s Ambassador to Pakistan, Adam M Tugio, said that Pakistan is strategically situated at the junction of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East and has tremendous potential to emerge as a centre of regional connectivity and economic activity.
“I am confident that the CPEC has enormous potential to generate a wide range of investment opportunities and to encourage industrial, financial and agricultural cooperation,” he said. “For its key exports to the Central Asian and Middle Eastern regions, Indonesia considers Pakistan as its diverse investment and joint venture destination.”
He said his country welcomed Pakistan’s efforts to boost regional connectivity and growth through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, speaking at a virtual meeting on Monday (CPEC).
He stressed that, with a combined population of nearly half a billion, Indonesia and Pakistan were the two emerging economies of young and talented people, and that they had enormous potential for trade, investment and economic cooperation.
According to him, education is one of the possible fields that the citizens of both countries will benefit from.
The envoy noted that academic cooperation has seen a substantial improvement in recent years as a number of memorandums of understanding were inked between the two countries’ universities while more were under process or consideration.
“Recent statistics indicate that the arrival of tourists from Pakistan to Indonesia remains low even compared to other countries in the South Asian region,” he said. He pointed out that in 2018, Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited Pakistan to develop a new dynamism in bilateral relations among the two nations.
He lamented that the two-way tourist traffic was insignificant, despite cordial relations between the two countries.
Tugio stated that the two countries have worked together on key regional and global issues and have continued to work with mutual collaboration and cooperation in key regional forums, including the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the ASEAN Regional Forum.
“I believe that Asean and Pakistan have great potential for cooperation in different sectors, as Pakistan’s total trade of more than $7 billion with Asean indicates that Islamabad has enormous scope to scale up its economic engagement with Asean,” he said.
