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27.07.2012 Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa stated on Thursday that his meeting with Vietnamese counterpart Pham Binh Minh had concluded on an optimistic note that the US$5 billion trade target between the two countries could be achieved ahead of the 2015 goal. “The comprehensive partnership between Indonesia and Vietnam has continued to strengthen and become more strategic,” Marty said in Hanoi, Vietnam, via a ministry statement made available to The Jakarta Post. Bilateral trade between the two countries jumped 53 percent from its 2010 level to $4.7 billion in 2011, according to the statement. “Given available figures, we are optimistic that the 2015 trade volume target can be reached earlier,” Marty said. Marty has been in Vietnam since Wednesday to lead the Indonesian delegation in the first Indonesia-Vietnam Joint Commission Assembly. The assembly is aimed at providing a regular and systematic mechanism to study and evaluate the countries’ bilateral cooperation in all sectors, including trade and investment, agriculture, maritime, politics, as well as social and cultural issues. “The first meeting in Hanoi marked a new era of Indonesia-Vietnam bilateral ties. With this forum, we will be able to identify potential steps to strengthen cooperation,” the ministry’s statement said. The assembly is also a mandate from the 2012-2015 Strategic Partnership Action Plan signed by the foreign ministers of Indonesia and Vietnam in Jakarta on Sept. 14, 2011, on the sidelines of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s state visit. Also on Wednesday, Marty met with PM Dung and Vietnamese Communist Party secretary-general Nguyen Phu Trong. Trong plans to visit Indonesia in September. Vietnam appreciated Marty’s recent “shuttle diplomacy”, which managed to establish common ground among ASEAN states in the South China Sea issues. The Jakarta Post |
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