While Vietnam and Indonesia are two major partners for each other in the region and of the world, there remains huge potential for both countries to boost trade and economic cooperation.

Indonesia’s Ambassador to Vietnam Denny Abdi (l) and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh (r). Source: MoIT

Indonesia’s Ambassador to Vietnam Denny Abdi gave the remarks at a meeting with Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh on March 8.

According to Abdi, despite the severe Covid-19 impacts, Vietnam remained the only country in the Southeast Asia with a positive economic growth, saying he is committed to further boost bilateral economic relations.

For his part, Deputy Minister Khanh stressed Indonesia is one of Vietnam’s key partners not only in the Southeast Asia, but also of the world.

“Over the years, Indonesia and Vietnam have been closely cooperating in both bilateral and multilateral channels, including major cooperation frameworks such as ASEAN, WTO or RCEP,” said Khanh.

Khanh added since the establishment of the bilateral strategic partnership in 2013, two-way trade turnover grew from US$5 billion to US$9 billion in 2019.

While the figure has slightly declined in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, Khanh expected trade relations between Vietnam-Indonesia would return to the upward trend from 2021 and onward, especially as the two are relatively complementary economies.