"I predict that the situation in Egypt will have a contagion effect in Nigeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other oil exporting countries. These countries happen to be the biggest oil producers in the world and Indonesia is importing petroleum from Nigeria." said Latif Adam, an economic observer at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).
He said if the contagion effect hits these countries, world oil prices would rise. "The most logical impact of a world oil price hike on our country will be higher transportation costs because we import petroleum from Nigeria. And our government needs to be aware of this," Latif said.
But as Indonesia had no significant economic relations with Egypt, it would not be directly affected by the political turmoil in the Middle Eastern country.
"The thing we should be worried about most is a surge in the world oil price as Middle Eastern countries as well as Nigeria are the world`s major oil exporting countries," Latif said.
When the world oil price rises, transportation costs in Indonesia would be automatically affected.
About Indonesia-Egypt economic partnership. he said Egypt was number 25 on Indonesia`s list of export destination countries. In the January-November period in 2010, Indonesia`s non-oil/non-gas exports to Egypt reached a value of 765.3 million US dollars.
Meanwhile, Egypt ranked 40th as Indonesia`s list of countries from which it imports goods. In the January-November 2010 period Indonesia`s imports from Egypt totaled 112.5 million US dollars. "These data show Egypt is not an important factor to the Indonesian economy," Latif said.
Indonesia`s exports to Egypt consisted of textiles, garments, crude palm oil (CPO), tea, coffee and seaweed. On the other hand, Egyptian exports to Indonesia included cotton, perfumes, cosmetics, drapery and gemstones.(*)
Editor: Ruslan Burhani
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
