World Bank Recommends Indonesia Strengthens Trade Policy That Leads To Green Transformation

Country Director of World Bank Indonesia and Timor Leste Satu Kahkonen. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The World Bank recommends Indonesia to strengthen trade policies that lead to a green transformation.

Country Director of World Bank Indonesia and Timor Leste Satu Kahkonen said Indonesia has shown good progress in utilizing trade for green transformation, but there needs to be reinforcement to overcome several challenges that hinder this transformation.

"The intensity of carbon in Indonesia's trade has been successfully handled since 2005. However, Indonesia in terms of competitiveness and exports of green goods and technology has not been able to meet demand. This requires further action," said Kahkonen in the Strategic Issues Forum on Trading Towards Sustainability in Jakarta, quoted from Antara, Thursday, January 18.

He said there are three things that need attention from Indonesia. First, increasing global and domestic demand for green goods and technology provides a significant opportunity for Indonesia.

According to him, Indonesia has significant potential to diversify green products with higher complexity when compared to other Southeast Asian countries, so that Indonesia can take advantage of this potential to provide benefits from an economic perspective and address the issue of climate change.

Second, the private sector is the key in implementing green product diversification. Therefore, the government needs to make policies that can facilitate private actors with high-quality technology at low cost.

In addition, he also advised the government to simplify policies in order to assist the private sector in increasing their business scale.

The last point is the need to align trade policies in Indonesia with green development. Kahkonen underlined that the Indonesian government needs to think of a more pro policies towards green policies.

"This is our opportunity to reform trade policy. The reform I mean can support Indonesia's long-term goals," he said.