Coordinating Minister Airlangga Invites South Korea To Invest In Technology

JAKARTA - Despite being faced with global economic stagnation and current financial market turmoil, the Indonesian economy has proven to be able to show its resilience in containing turmoil with an impressive growth achievement in 2023 of 5.05 percent (yoy) and still grow solid by 5.11 percent (yoy) in the first quarter of 2024.

Meanwhile, this national economic growth is even able to exceed the estimates of a number of international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.

Along with the resilience of the national economic condition, Indonesia's bilateral cooperation with a number of countries also continues to strengthen, one of which is with South Korea.

The total value of bilateral trade between Indonesia and South Korea alone reached 20.8 billion US dollars in 2023.

In addition, South Korea will also be one of Indonesia's largest investors in 2023 with a total Foreign Direct Investment worth around 2.5 billion US dollars.

The amount of investment increased by 200 million US dollars or 8.70 percent from 2022.

As an effort to strengthen bilateral relations between Indonesia and South Korea, on a working visit to South Korea agenda, Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto met LG CEO CNS Shingyoon Hyun in Seoul, South Korea.

On this occasion, Airlangga expressed his appreciation to LG CNS for signing the MOA with the Sinar Mas Group for the establishment of the PMA Joint Ventura (JV) in the field of data center management consulting services as well as Information and Communication of Technology (ICT) which is targeted for completion in the second semester of 2024.

"We hope that South Korea can increase its investment in various fields, one of which is in the field of technology development, including to increase its human resources with training support in the field of technology, of course," said Airlangga in his statement, quoted Tuesday, May 22.

The JV will target ICT services in smart city development, including cloud computing-based data migration consulting services. Furthermore, Airlangga hopes that LG CNS can maintain and realize the commitment to establishing this JV data center in the second semester of 2024.

Furthermore, Airlangga also appreciated the commitment of LG CNS in supporting the development of smart cities in Indonesia.

Furthermore, LG CNS has been involved in designing the Smart City Concept for the Capital City of the Archipelago (IKN) since December 2022.

According to Airlangga, this project aims to integrate Artificial Inetelligency (AI), data, cloud technology in smart services for IKN.

"In the future, LG CNS is expected to expand its investment to Indonesia and can create sustainable business and develop the Indonesian economy through the establishment of a leading technology platform," he said.