Indonesia resumes economic commission with Iraq

The governments of Indonesia and Iraq agreed this week to reactivate the joint commission on economic cooperation after a seven-year pause due to wars in Iraq, an Indonesian newspaper reported Wednesday.

Senior officials and entrepreneurs from both countries met in Jakarta Tuesday to revitalize the commission and settled problems arising in a vacuum, including unpaid debts, said Bisnis Indonesia.

"We hope the revitalized cooperation will boost trade volume and allow technological exchanges," said Herry Soetanto, director general of international trade cooperation with the Trade Ministry.

The Tuesday's meeting focused on trade, financial and technological cooperation, he said.

Herry said the average bilateral trade growth in the last five years has declined by 2.99 percent.

The bilateral trade volume peaked at 165.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2002, but fell sharply to 12.4 billion in the following year.

In 2005, the bilateral trade volume jumped to 85.6 billion dollars from 14.5 billion in the previous year.

Last year, Indonesia enjoyed a surplus of 85.3 billion dollars against a deficit of 28.3 billion a year earlier.

In the meeting, Bank Mandiri and Bank BRI reported unpaid debt claims of 69 million dollars and 500,000 dollars respectively.

The debts resulted from the issuance of letter of credits for tea and can exports to Iraq in 1993-95, during which Iraq was under the UN economic embargo.

Source: Xinhua