Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto was one of the heads of state attending the Eastern Economic Forum. Speaking at the Forum, he lauded the cooperation that his country had developed with Russia. “The Russian Far East and Indonesia are both very vast,” he said, “it takes many hours to fly from one end of our territories to the other. We know that the capital city can sometimes feel very far from the frontier communities. But Vladivostok also feels rather close to my home. The same great ocean, the Pacific Ocean, touches the shores of Russia and also touches the shores of Indonesia. The Pacific Ocean does not separate us. The Pacific Ocean connects us. It is not a wall between us. It must be a highway between our two economies.”
He underlined the theme of this year’s forum “The Far East: Development for the Benefit of the People.” He noted how the policy of the Indonesian government was also based on this principle, noting that it was providing free meals for children and their pregnant mothers. “This is why we are pursuing food self-sufficiency and energy security. This is why we are accelerating downstream industrialization so that our natural resources can create industrial skills and good jobs at home. This is why we seek faster economic growth—not growth just for growth’s sake, but growth that can lift millions of people out of poverty into dignity.”
