Jakarta. Indonesian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are set to explore investment opportunities in the country’s non-traditional market of Central and South Asia in an upcoming forum.

The Indonesian government will hold the 2024 Indonesia-South and Central Asia (INASCA) Business Forum in Jakarta on Oct. 7. Hundreds of companies from both home and the said two regions will gather for some business talks. 

According to Abdul Kadir Jaelani, a director-general at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Indonesia has yet fully unlocked the largely untapped markets of Central and South Asia -- hence the forum’s focus.

Kadir claimed that Indonesia had not set a target on the monetary value of the deals that they would bring home from this annual business gathering. However, securing investment deals will be high up in the agenda. 

“We are aware that Indonesia is not only an investment destination but also a capital-exporting country. South Asia and Central Asia hold a quite large potential and we can see our SOEs potentially playing a role in these regions,” Kadir told the press in Jakarta on Friday.

Kadir also revealed that the state-run oil and gas firm Pertamina would be among the SOE attendees.

Pertamina already has some past interactions with these two regions. In South Asia, Pertamina’s gas subholding PGN inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Intraco in 2022. The deal covers the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and natural gas infrastructure in Bangladesh.

Back in 2012, Pertamina was mulling acquiring oil and gas blocks in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan. Pertamina announced the plans during Kazakhstani then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to Jakarta. The company said at the time that the potential output in the oil-gas block acquisition could reach 50,000 barrels per day, according to media reports.

Indonesia, which will soon see a shift in presidency, has recently been quite active in trying to unlock non-traditional markets. Earlier this month, the Southeast Asian country held the Indonesia-Africa Forum which resulted in  32 business deals worth totaling $3.5 billion.