SL & Indonesia must look beyond ASEAN to TPP – Dr. Rohantha Athukorala

The SL-Indonesia Trade Conference - an event which featured Indonesian Ambassador to Sri Lanka Harimawan Suyitno, Former Chairman of the Sri Lanka Export Development Board and Sri Lanka Tourism Dr. Rohantha Athukorala and former diplomat Gamini Munasinghe - was staged on the theme ‘Sri Lanka-Indonesia Relations and the ASEAN Community’ at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS) recently. 

After Munasinghe offered a historical overview of ASEAN and outlined its evolution, Dr. Athukorala, who is currently heading the Rs. 35 billion Lanka Sathosa, voiced that Sri Lanka and Indonesia must work on gaining membership to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) rather than just focusing on ASEAN given that the 12 countries that the TPP would provide access to account for $ 105 billion and cut through Australia and the Unites States.

Focusing on Indonesia, Dr. Athukorala stated that the country already had agreements with almost seven nations, with trade amounting to around $ 56 billion, which showed how important it was for Sri Lanka to have a bilateral agreement with Indonesia.

“We must get into the global value chain,” he said. “Given that we have limited access to the Indonesian market with products like pneumatic tyres, surgical gloves, electronic components, clothing accessories, natural rubber, bicycle tyres, tobacco products which are not essentially the strengths of Sri Lanka. But I guess a more detailed study will have to be done based on ‘comparative strengths’ so that a detailed understanding of the market size can be done and the leverage the Sri Lanka- Indonesia partnership can have on the TPP market pact. But the direction is very clear given that via Indonesia we can reach the $ 100 billion plus markets with seven of them having a FTA already accounting for $ 50 billion,” said Dr. Athukorala. 

However, he cautioned that after serving on the EDB board for over five years he knew that the challenge was not export promotion but supply chain development in Sri Lanka.