Last month, President Jokowi named Teuku Faizasyah as the new ambassador to Norway, who has said that he intends to focus on strengthening bilateral economic ties, while also trying to bring Norwegian investment into Indonesia’s new capital city project Nusantara, according to reporting from Jakarta Globe.
“There are relatively no issues between Norway and Indonesia from a political relation standpoint. So I would mainly focus on building bilateral economic partnership,” Faizasyah told reporters in Jakarta on Thursday.
The diplomat also plans on making sure that the ongoing bilateral partnerships in energy transition and forest management run smoothly.
When asked about his plans to attract investment to Nusantara, Faizasyah said he would continue his predecessor Todung Mulya Lubis’ work on getting Norway to help Indonesia build a city from scratch in East Kalimantan, say Jakarta Globe.
“There have been steps taken [to attract Norwegian investment to Nusantara], including talks on sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world,” Faizasyah said.
Jakarta Globe report that the SWF Institute ranked the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global as the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund by total assets amounting to USD 1.37-trillion, followed by China Investment Corporation at USD 1.35-trillion.
Government data shows Indonesia-Norway trade amounted to USD 405.9-million throughout 2022. Bilateral trade in the first five months of 2023 already surpassed those numbers, reaching USD 441.3-million.
According to Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi during a visit to Oslo in June, Norway has committed USD 250-million in climate financing under the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) say Jakarta Globe.
The JETP is a USD 20-billion climate financing package for Indonesia that brings together wealthy nations and financial institutions as donors. Aside from Norway, countries such as the US, Japan, the UK, and many more are also chipping in this JETP financing to help Indonesia move away from coal-fired power generation. Indonesia and Norway have also inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on emission reduction from forestry and other land use (FoLu).
Source: Jakarta Globe
