by: Peter Tase – Journalist from American Congress Library, residing in Paraguay and in The United States of Amerika
Two years ago, it was precisely on November 29, 2014, Paraguay celebrated 33 years of bilateral relations with the Republic of Indonesia, the country with the 4th largest population country in the world with over 250 million inhabitants. As part of the G11 member countries focusing on the alleviating of poverty, Indonesia and Paraguay became a member of the World Trade Organization in 1995.
Although there is a large potential opportunity to improve bilateral relations between the two countries in trade, politics and economics, and eventhough Jakarta is one of the fifteen most important cities in trade relations with Paraguay, The Foreign Minister of Paraguay viewed from the other side. For example, a great giant of Southeast Asia has been importing more than US $ 19.5 million in 2012, and the value of imports increased significantly in 2013 to reach more than US $ 121.8 million, which would provide benefits for Paraguay than the value of trade in goods.
But unfortunately the good relationship in trading was not followed by the Paraguayian government’s strategy appropriately, where the actual big business opportunity can be done through a framework of cooperation in the Free Trade Agreement between Indonesia and Paraguay, as well as between Paraguay and the ASEAN countries (currently ASEAN is the biggest trading group in the world along with Japan, China and Russia). Instead of getting the trade opportunities that can only be obtained once in a lifetime, the government of Paraguay still do the implementation of their own policies.
The commercial agreement was considered favorably for Paraguay and the efforts conducted by Minister Gustavo Leite and his colleagues in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MIC) together with the Network of Investment and Export Paraguay (REDIEX) was really astonished and showed the outstanding performance, Asuncion for the first time has visionary and pragmatic leader.
Paraguay: Main supplier of primary food ingredients to Indonesia
