JAKARTA – The long history of Hong Kong and Indonesia weaving a strong bilateral economic bond provides a solid foundation for the two economies to step toward a better future, a forum in Jakarta heard on Wednesday.

The “Think Business Think Hong Kong” symposium, held in Indonesia’s capital city, brought together hundreds of business people from Indonesia and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The forum aimed to increase cooperation in trade and investment, with Indonesia expecting to see Hong Kong investment in more fields, given the Southeast Asian country’s economic strengths — notably its sound banking system.      

READ MORE: CE: HK to make expanding ties with ASEAN a top priority

Edi Prio Pambudi, deputy to the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs of Indonesia, said Hong Kong has for decades been Indonesia’s key partner in trade and investment, not just financially but also logistically.

“We understand Hong Kong is the busiest seaport in the world. It also reflects the connectivity of Hong Kong around the world,” Pambudi said.

Paul Chan Mo-po, financial secretary of the Hong Kong SAR, said that “Hong Kong is the only place in the world where the China advantage and the global advantage converge in a single city”.

“Under ‘one country’, we enjoy the full support of our motherland to develop as an international financial, shipping and trade centers …,” he said.

Chan added that, under China’s “two systems” of governance with HK’s special autonomy, Indonesian companies can leverage closer economic partnership arrangements between the mainland and Hong Kong to gain easy and sometimes even priority access to the mainland market.

“As a superconnector and super value-adder, Hong Kong has all these on offer,” Chan said, highlighting the city’s value-added supply chain management, its trade, its finance capabilities and its culture among other things.

Pambudi noted that Hong Kong is Indonesia’s second-largest investor with investments amounting to $6 billion in the third quarter of 2024. During the January-October period of last year, Indonesia’s trade with Hong Kong reached $4.7 billion.

ALSO READ: ASEAN visit: HK enters 15 trade deals with Indonesia

Pambudi called for Hong Kong investments in high-value downstream industries in nickel, among others. Nickel, which Indonesia has in abundance, is a key material for producing electric vehicle batteries, he said.

Also speaking at the forum were Peter K N Lam, chairman of Hong Kong Trade Development Council; Guy Bradley, chairman of Swire Pacific Ltd; Bernard Chamwut Chan, chairman and president of Asia Financial Holdings Ltd; Shinta Widjaja Kamdani, chief executive officer of Sintesa Group and chairwoman of the Indonesian Employer’s Association; and Rex Sham, co-founder and chief science officer of Insight Robotics Ltd.

Kamdani said there is much that Indonesian companies can do in Hong Kong, as the city provides an entry point to the global market and many Indonesian companies have been trading in Hong Kong for a long time.  

She said few people are aware that Hong Kong is the number three investor in Indonesia, and that doing business with Hong Kong is not necessarily limited to big conglomerates. Medium-sized enterprises and family businesses in Indonesia, which are vast in number, can build business partnerships with businesses in Hong Kong.  

Lam said Hong Kong plays a unique role as a superconnector, linking the vast Chinese mainland market with the rest of the world, which is “a role that we value and welcome Indonesian businesses to leverage”.

Rex Sham said that, by leveraging China’s green technologies, more can be done to protect forests and plantation assets in ASEAN countries, including Indonesia, as well as in other parts of the world.

READ MORE: Indonesian consortia planning family offices in SAR

He said Hong Kong’s financial institutions would be willing to give loans to plantations and agricultural companies for AI technology that can automatically count the number of trees, grade the sizes of trees, specify the heights of trees, the plantation planting distance and planting point detection.

He said countries that experience forest fires, like Indonesia, need drone technology for detecting hot spots. Indonesia has had some devastating forest fires in recent years.

The European Union has expressed serious concerns about forest fires in Indonesia and has therefore tried to restrict its importations of a number of products from the nation, including biofuels, food and feed products, chemicals, cosmetics and lubricants.

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.