JAKARTA: The Trade Ministry expressed its commitment to boosting trade with South Korea through the ASEAN Korea Center (AKC), which aims to achieve trade worth a total of US$200 billion by 2020.
The commitment was made during the ninth council of the AKC in Seoul.
“In this year’s work program, we’ve committed to partaking actively in the game exhibition in Busan. We’ll also hold a joint workshop on food for SMEs [small and medium enterprises] in Jakarta and Makassar,” said Ari Satria, the ministry’s secretary general for export development in a press statement.
The AKC is an inter-governmental organization supporting and improving cooperation among ASEAN countries and South Korea through people-to-people contact. For the January-to-November 2016 period, Indonesia enjoyed a trade surplus of $253.8 million through the facility, a notable improvement from a $669.42 million deficit in the same period in 2015.
Since ASEAN and South Korea cooperation started in 1989, Korea has become the fifth-biggest ASEAN trading partner. ASEAN is the second-biggest trading partner for South Korea according to ministry data.
“We hope to ride on the cooperation in the AKC to benefit Indonesia, in terms of increasing our exports,” Ari added.
