Trade With Indonesia

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31321, 17 March 1967, Page 10

Trade With Indonesia

The Indonesian Government is taking a long and encouraging step: from the “ confrontation ” of Malaysia to wide-ranging trade talks in South-east Asia and the Pacific. It is expected that a trade mission due to visit Australia late this year will come on to New Zealand. Measures to restore the Indonesian economy necessarily centre on reduced Government spending, last year estimated at about three times the nation’s revenues. External debt adjustment is also proving a long and laborious process. The Government is, however, receiving the credits that it needs to revive industrial production. Nearly three-quarters of the population is engaged in agriculture and related processes, and there must be scope for tremendous development in the export of such products as palm oil, sugar, fibres, rubber, tea, coffee, and tobacco. While Indonesia’s main commercial ties will naturally be with her near neighbours, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Japan, there is no reason why profitable trading should not extend to Australia and New Zealand.

Discussions during the visits now contemplated should aim at positive trade arrangements. Britain has been buying from Indonesia petroleum products, rubber, tea, and sugar in exchange for a wide range of machinery, chemicals, motor vehicles, and electrical equipment. New Zealand’s exports to South-east Asian countries have increased appreciably in the last year or two, and Indonesia should prove a useful market when its economy settles down again. The Indonesian rubber estates are among the largest in the world. Restored to private management after the Sukarno era of expropriation, they should once more prove an important earner of overseas exchange. If the recovery tasks are tackled vigorously in Indonesia, the country’s trade negotiators will discover a fund of good will in Australia and New Zealand.