Indonesia’s Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs is planning to complete the 19th round of negotiations for the Indonesia-European Union Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IEU-CEPA) this year, according to reporting from Antara News.
Deputy for international economic cooperation coordination at the ministry, Edi Prio Pambudi, said that Indonesia wrapped up the 18th round of negotiations on May 13 to 17, 2024, followed by the Chief Negotiator Meeting on May 18 to 19 in Brussels, Belgium.
Pambudi noted that the IEU-CEPA negotiations have gone on for quite long because the standards set by the European Union have been changing constantly. The 19th round of negotiations is scheduled to take place in July.
In this regard, the Indonesian government has urged the European Union to set clear and consistent standards or consider goal-setting for every negotiation, says Antara News
Overall, the 18th round of negotiations went well and significant progress was made, Pambudi said. Both parties showed flexibility and were pragmatic in pursuing the target of completing the negotiations this year.
“We continue to voice Indonesia as an independent country, a sovereign country. We do not want everything related to this to be controlled by them,” he explained.
Antara News reports that the IEU-CEPA negotiations are aimed at opening trade between Indonesia and the European Union. The two parties will benefit from the agreement in terms of the economy with an increase in real gross domestic product (GDP.)
The results of a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that real GDP growth could potentially reach 0.10 percent and income effect could likely increase by USD 2.8 billion for Indonesia, while Indonesia’s exports to the European Union could likely grow by 57.76 percent.
Source: Antara News
Stock image by Julius Silver on Pexels
