Indonesia, the largest economy in Southeast Asian region is improving its economy’s competitiveness in anticipation of the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community ( AEC ) in 2015.
The country is stepping up efforts to increase competitiveness of areas such as textile and garments, footwear, electronics, machinery, coffee, shrimps, and tourism.
Rizal Affandi Lukman, a representative from Indonesia’s economic ministry recently has said that increasing the competitiveness is an essential task because there will be free flows of capital, goods, services, investment and labour once AEC is established by 2015.
Rizal said that despite huge opportunity offered by the regional integration, Indonesia is still facing challenges at home with poor infrastructure and high logistic cost problems.
The world's fourth populous country , Indonesia has contributed 41 percent to the region’s GDP . The figure is expected to go up 6.3 percent this year. -VNA
