"Cooperation between Malaysia and Indonesia clearly plays an important role in creating a strong ASEAN economic community. In the future, ASEAN will play no small role in world economic affairs," Malaysian Second Minister for Financial Affairs Dato Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah said on the sidelines of an Indonesia-Malaysia seminar here on Friday.
He said bilateral cooperation between members of ASEAN should be stepped up so that the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 could be realized.
ASEAN member countries` respective potentials must be maximized so that they would be complementary to each other, such as their potentials in the infrastructure, energy, technology, information, agriculture, plantations and other sectors, he said.
"Collaboration in optimizing the potentials needs to be increased and expanded. Business cooperation between Indonesia and Malaysia needs to be stepped up so that it would reinforce with each other," the Malaysian minister said.
He said that cooperation between the two countries such in the infrastructure and energy sectors was open wide. One of them is the procurement of electricity in Kalimantan.
Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah said that the trade cooperation between Indonesia and Malaysia has so far running well and mutually beneficial.
He said that Malaysia`s total trade with Indonesia was recorded at US$12.1 billion.(*)
Editor: Ruslan Burhani
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