Indonesia, Uzbekistan agree to boost trade cooperation

The agreement was reached at the 4th RI-Uzbekistan bilateral consultative committee meeting in Medan, North Sumatra, on Monday.

Foreign ministry`s South and Central Asia Director Mohamad Asruchin flanked by Indonesian Ambassador to Uzbekistan Sjahril Sabaruddin said following the meeting that the trade and customs cooperation is expected to increasingly open access of Indonesian businesspeople to that country.

"We are trying to bring the two countries closer together. While we have been selling only palm oil, tea and rubber to Uzbekistan, in the future years we also hope to offer them other products," he said.

He said that actually, many other Indonesian products had entered Uzbekistan, including farm produce, furniture, garments and footwear, but only through third countries like Dubai or Iran.

"In the coming years we hope to go straight into that country, especially that under this new cooperation there will be some customs cuts to enable our products to become competitive in the Uzbekistani market," he said.

Sjahril Sabaruddin said RI-Uzbekistan trade in 2006 reached 10.257 million US dollars, with minus 8.175 million US dollars for Indonesia. Indonesia`s imports from that country in the same year reached 9.357 million US dollars, but exports only 1.181 million US dollars.

"Last year our trade with Uzbekistan increased to 245 million US dollars, and our imports amounted to 22.5 million US dollars, while our exports mainly comprising cotton, oil and gas, reached only 1.5 million US dollars, " he said.

He added that Uzbekistan is one of the rapidly growing markets in Central Asia. Uzbekistan is also a hub for Indonesia`s export products to Central Asia like Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Khazakstan.

The region is holding a great deal of world oil deposits comparable only to that in the Gulf region. Demands for Indonesian products from the region had also been quite high and varied, including rattan furniture, tires, paper, cacao, frying oil, CPO, and textiles.

Aware of the difficulties in doing business with the West, Uzbekistan and some ...