The COVID-19 Pandemic Makes Many Countries Choose Partners, What About Indonesia?

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Trade (Kemendag) revealed that there has been a new trade phenomenon in the last two years. Where many countries are starting to be picky about their trading partners.

Head of the Trade Policy Agency of the Ministry of Trade, Kasan explained that the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the presence of this phenomenon. He said the phenomenon is commonly referred to as technology decoupling and friendshoring.

"Maybe this issue also arises, I think it will be impacted by one of the disasters we face around the world, namely the presence of COVID-19," said Kasan in Gambir Trade Talk in Jakarta, Wednesday, May 15.

According to Kasan, this condition had an impact on the messy trade activities between countries. Where the trade activity also has an impact on the global supply chain.

Furthermore, Kasan said, several countries finally decided to establish trade cooperation with certain countries that have close ties.

"So I think, if I read from some of the existing literature, this thermological issue arose, one of which was also triggered by the existence of COVID-19, one of which was supply chain which was concentrated in one of the regions or one of the countries. even, "he explained.

According to Kasan, the technology decoupling policy and the friendsering phenomenon will also have an impact on the export-import performance of a country.

Regarding the impact on Indonesia's trade performance, Kasan said the data would be released by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) this afternoon. However, he said several institutions that had predicted the surplus were likely to decline slightly from last month.

"For example, then imports will increase slightly, for example, things like this which I think are the impact of the terminology about technology decoupling or friendshoring," he said.