Jakarta. The newly appointed Indonesian Ambassador to Norway Teuku Faizasyah said Thursday that he would focus on strengthening bilateral economic ties, while also trying to bring Norwegian investment into Indonesia's new capital city project Nusantara.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo last month named Foreign Affairs Ministry's spokesman Teuku Faizasyah as the new Indonesian ambassador to Norway and also accredited to Iceland. The diplomat said he would be putting economic cooperation on top of his priority list during his time in the Nordic country.

"There are relatively no issues between Norway and Indonesia from a political relation standpoint. So I would mainly focus on building bilateral economic partnership," Faizasyah told reporters in Jakarta on Thursday.

The diplomat also plans on making sure that the ongoing bilateral partnerships in energy transition and forest management run smoothly.

When asked about his plans to attract investment to Nusantara, Faizasyah said he would continue his predecessor Todung Mulya Lubis’ work on getting Norway to help Indonesia build a city from scratch in East Kalimantan.

"There have been steps taken [to attract Norwegian investment to Nusantara], including talks on sovereign wealth funds. Norway has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world," Faizasyah said.

The SWF Institute ranked the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global as the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund by total assets. Data shows the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s assets stood at a whopping $1.37 trillion. Followed by China Investment Corporation ($1.35 trillion). 

Government data shows Indonesia-Norway trade amounted to $405.9 million throughout 2022. Bilateral trade in the first five months of 2023 already surpassed those numbers, reaching $441.3 million. 

According to Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi during a visit to Oslo in June, Norway has committed $250 million in climate financing under the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). The JETP is a $20-billion climate financing package for Indonesia that brings together wealthy nations and financial institutions as donors. Aside from Norway, countries such as the US, Japan, the UK, and many more are also chipping in this JETP financing to help Indonesia move away from coal-fired power generation. Indonesia and Norway have also inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on emission reduction from forestry and other land use (FoLu).

Read More: Grant Portion in $20b JETP Green Pact Still Under Negotiation: Secretariat

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