Indonesia proposes the integration of the Subregional Cooperation Fora under ASEAN, namely IMT-GT, BIMP-EAGA, and GMS, termed as “ASEAN BIG”.
Edi Prio Pambudi, Deputy for Coordination of International Economic Cooperation at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, said the integration is important to support the improvement of the region’s supply chain and logistics, as well as to serve as an important resource development center.
“This proposal was welcomed by senior officials and asked ADB (Asian Development Bank) to prepare the implementation concept,” Edi said in Jakarta on Tuesday.
The plan was discussed at the Plenary Strategic Planning Meeting of the Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) cooperation, which was the culmination of a series of 2024 SPM meetings held in Tangerang Regency on Monday (25/3).
The meeting aimed to hear progress reports on cooperation and plans for the current year’s work programs from all working groups, the Joint Business Council (JBC), and the university network (UNINET).
To obtain further guidance, the senior officials also discussed several strategic projects that were discussed technically at the national secretariat level the day before, including the IMT-GT partnership with India which has reached the implementation stage, the promotion of the IMT-GT Visit Year 2023-2025, and the optimization of the potential of the rubber industry with the implementation of the Rubber City program.
Several strategic issues were also reported by the working group to encourage regional integration, including Dumai-Melaka multimodal transportation, IMT-GT Mall digitalization platform project, CIQ cooperation framework signing plan.
In addition, there is also a collaboration project between academics (UNINET) and entrepreneurs (JBC) to develop a Research & Development Center of Excellence.
“No less important, the QR Code-based cross-border payment transaction initiative between the three countries was also discussed as a payment option for the MSME exhibition held at the meeting,” said Edi.
On that occasion, he said, Indonesia proposed a breakthrough for food security and digitalization strategies with the involvement of all local governments in the subregion.
Indonesia explained the success of the central and regional inflation control teams (TPIP and TPID) and the regional digitalization acceleration and expansion team (TP2DD) in controlling inflation and digitizing local governments, one of which can be used to facilitate the distribution of food when needed.
Indonesia as the forum leader (chair) appreciated the performance of IMT-GT which has grown more than tenfold, reaching 405.7 billion US dollars since its establishment three decades ago.
However, Indonesia calls for a shared awareness so that the economic benefits in the region can be felt more equally by all countries in the region.