Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Source: EPA/VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – Indonesian President Joko Widodo arrived in Sydney on February 25, beginning his first visit to Australia since he took office in late 2014.
The focus of the two-day visit is to discuss measures to boost bilateral cooperation in a wide range of fields such as tourism, mining, infrastructure development, agriculture, food security, cyber security, counter-terrorism and finalisation of a trade agreement.
President Widodo initiated a programme to develop “10 New Bali” across the country with the aim of attracting 20 million international tourists to Indonesia by 2019.
Earlier, Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull said economic cooperation would be the focus of discussions during President Widodo’s visit.
Despite being neighbours, economic relations between Australia and Indonesia have remained modest with the two-way trade value of only 11.5 billion USD and Indonesia has not been ranked among Australia’s 10 top trade partners.
The two countries are negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) and hoped that it would be signed in 2017 to facilitate economic cooperation.-VNA
