Indonesian Minister of Trade Agus Suparmanto (Photo: https://www.urdupoint.com/) Jakarta (VNA) – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) welcomes the United Kingdom (UK)’s proposal to become the grouping’s dialogue partner to explore bilateral economic cooperation potential, said Indonesian Minister of Trade Agus Suparmanto.
The Indonesian minister was attending the "AEM Troika Open-ended Dialogue with UK Trade Ministers" that was held online as part of the 52nd ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting (AEM-52) which is taking place from August 22-29.
He said that during the event, participants discussed various global and regional development issues related to COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit, and UK tariff simplification based on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
He held that ASEAN and the UK share high potential of cooperation in areas of digital economy, financial technology, especially among micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as in environment.
Statistics from the ASEAN Secretariat shows that the UK is the 13th ASEAN trading partner with total trade hitting 35.7 billion USD in 2019. The UK is the sixth biggest investor of ASEAN with an investment of 7.7 billion USD./.
VNA
