Remarks of President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Bilateral Meeting with the President of the United Arab Emirates, Qasr Al Watan, Abu Dhabi, November 23, 2024

Your Excellency President of the United Arab Emirates, President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and distinguished leaders of the United Arab Emirates Government,

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Your Excellency and the people of the Emirates for the warm and gracious welcome extended to me today. This is a profound honor for me and for all the people of Indonesia. I am also deeply thankful to Your Excellency for appointing special envoy to attend my inauguration as President of the Republic of Indonesia.

Indeed, Your Excellency, our relationship has been well established over the years. I have had the honor of knowing Your Excellency for a long time, and now, by the grace of God, I have been entrusted by my people to lead the Indonesian nation. And, I would like to continue this very good relationship.

We Indonesians hold Your Excellency in the highest regard as an exceptionally successful leader with a visionary outlook. Your remarkable achievements in driving rapid modernization in the Emirates are truly inspiring, and we aspire to learn from Your Excellency’s expertise. Your leadership and experience, particularly in development and geopolitics, are invaluable. For this reason, we are committed to maintaining our strong relationship and fostering continued coordination with Your Excellency.

The priorities of my Government moving forward are, first, to ensure food safety and security, second, to ensure energy security, and third, to carry out industrial downstreaming by processing all our raw materials in Indonesia to gain added value. This means that we are preparing to carry out massive industrialization.

In this regard, we recognize that both the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia share many common interests. This is a great potential for collaboration across several sectors, and we warmly invite the United Arab Emirates to actively participate in our economy.

For example, let us express our gratitude for your invaluable assistance in establishing our Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), which has now evolved into INA (Indonesia Investment Authority). Moving forward, we aim to significantly expand the scale of our Sovereign Wealth Fund and are eager to learn from the United Arab Emirates’ extensive experience in this area.

In many sectors, we have enjoyed excellent collaboration. I also want to thank you for inviting us to provide humanitarian assistance. And now our health team is collaborating with the UAE’s field hospital in Rafah, Gaza. We thank you for this collaboration. For Your Excellency’s initiative to invite us, we are sincerely grateful.

In certain areas, we have engaged in more technical discussions with the officials Your Excellency appointed. Up to now, we have detailed conversations with His Excellency Suhail, and we are prepared to continue consultations at both the operational and follow-up levels.

Once again, I sincerely thank you for the warm and gracious reception. This reflects the strength and positivity of our relationship, and I look forward to continuing our cooperation and consultations with Your Excellency.

I thank you.

(TM/EP)