Jakarta, The Indonesia Post – Minister of Investment/Head of the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) Bahlil Lahadalia said that holding the 2023 ASEAN Investment Forum (AIF) was to build inclusive investment collaboration.
Bahlil stated that the 2023 AIF was a follow-up to discussions at the 2023 ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) Meeting in Semarang, August 2023.
“We are discussing this in order to follow up on what we focused on during discussions at yesterday’s ministerial level forums in Semarang, especially about how to build inclusive investment collaboration related to FDI (foreign direct investment) entering ASEAN and those entering ASEAN. “For the world, ASEAN (recipient of FDI) is the second largest,” said Bahlil after being the key speaker at AIF 2023 entitled investments for Sustainable Development in Jakarta, Saturday.
AIF 2023 is a side activity of the 43rd ASEAN Summit.
However, he continued, because the distribution of investment is not evenly distributed, through AIF 2023 it is hoped that there will be policies so that sustainable development in ASEAN is more equitable.
One of them is giving each country the freedom to formulate what strategic steps to use based on the comparative advantages of each country.
“Moreover, we all know that ASEAN is the second largest recipient of FDI in the world, (but) 60 percent of it is only controlled by 1 percent of the ASEAN population and in my opinion this is contrary to the basic philosophy of the birth of ASEAN because ASEAN is for prosperity and cooperation. mutually beneficial,” he said.
Apart from that, he also emphasized that the existence of ASEAN should not be exploited by certain countries, including Indonesia, both in the context of trade and investment.
“I say that ASEAN should not be used by one particular country, including Indonesia. Even though 43 percent of the ASEAN population is Indonesia, the existence of ASEAN should not be used by one country, it must be for all countries, both in the context of trade and investment,” he said.
Previously, Bahlil revealed that the average economic growth for ASEAN countries in 2022 would reach 5.6 percent.
“Excluding our youngest brother Timor Leste, whereas in the last decade the average annual economic growth of ASEAN countries reached 3.98 percent above the average global economic growth of 2.6 percent, in 2022 the total ASEAN GDP will reach 3.9 trillion US dollars has increased more than fivefold in the last 20 years,” said Bahlil.
According to him, one of the keys to ASEAN’s rapid economic growth is investment. “And in my opinion, investment is one of the keys to pushing it towards prosperity,” continued Bahlil.
Even though global FDI will decline by 12 percent in 2022, he said, FDI in ASEAN will actually increase by 5 percent to reach 224.2 billion US dollars.
“This has happened and is the highest in the history of ASEAN. With this figure, ASEAN is the second largest recipient of FDI in the world,” said Bahlil. (mhn/bbs)
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