Jakarta. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo recently told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to invest in Indonesia’s durian plantations as Beijing’s imports of the exotic fruit amounted to billions of dollars.

Jokowi made the offer over dinner during his Chengdu trip last week. Indonesia also already has several locations in mind for this durian project, according to Chief Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.

“Who would have thought that President Jokowi and Xi Jinping would talk about durian during dinner? Chinese imports of durians were worth $4 billion,” Luhut said at the Investor Daily Roundtable in Jakarta on Monday evening.

“So we can offer 5,000-hectare land. We can allocate 70 percent of the durian grown in the plantation in Indonesia to them [China], whereas we will get the remaining 30 percent. We also spoke of this durian potential to the Beijing Genomics Institute the next day,” Luhut said.

Indonesia is also aiming to capture up to 40 percent of Chinese durian imports.

“So if China imported $4 billion worth of durians and if we can get between 25 and 40 percent [of those imports], that is already a whopping $1.5 billion. This partnership also involves many micro, small and medium enterprises [MSMEs] as well as the smaller communities,” Luhut told B Universe reporters, shortly after the forum.

The Chinese advisory body Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC) wants to know more about this partnership, according to Luhut.

“We have just gotten some updates. The DRC just asked about this [partnership]. President [Jokowi] has instructed me to find out where [China] can grow durians and we have come up with several options. There is a region [available for durian plantation] close to North Sumatera. There is also Sulawesi, particularly Southeast Sulawesi, if I’m not mistaken,” Luhut said. 

According to business news outlet Yicai, as reported by China Daily, Chinese durian imports stood at $4.02 billion or around 825,000 tons last year. This was twofold of the durians that the country shipped in back in 2014.

China is one of Indonesia’s top foreign investors in 2022. The foreign direct investment coming from China totaled $8.2 billion that year, ranking second after Singapore ($13.3 billion).

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