Prabowo to Fly to Singapore for Leaders’ Retreat with Wong Next Week
Jakarta. President Prabowo Subianto is set to head to Singapore for a leaders’ retreat with the close neighbor’s prime minister, Lawrence Wong, on Monday.
Foreign Affairs Ministry’s spokesman Rolliansyah “Roy” Soemirat revealed Prabowo’s state visit plans in a press briefing on Thursday. The envoy said that this would mark Prabowo's first trip to Singapore during his presidency, which had only begun last October. It would also be the first leaders' retreat since Singapore held its general election in May.
“They will discuss various fields in regards to strategic cooperation between the freshly minted government and cabinets. … There will be lots of discussions on investments across different sectors. … However, the deliverables of this meeting are still in preparation,” Roy told reporters in Jakarta.
The spokesman added that the relaxed nature of the retreat would likely enable more frank discussions.
Roy also cited the upcoming Singapore trip as one of the reasons why Prabowo would skip the G7 Summit in Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has invited the Indonesian leader to join the summit as one of the group’s outreach guests on June 17 or next Tuesday. This would mean that the G7 talks would take place just a day after Prabowo’s Singapore trip.
The G7 is a group of the world's richest countries, but its outreach session is open to non-members. Prabowo will also travel to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin that same week.
It is quite expected that investments will be a major talking point in the upcoming talks as Singapore continues to become Indonesia’s biggest foreign investor. Official statistics showed that Singapore had invested about $4.6 billion in the country during the first quarter of 2025. Singapore had also put in around $2.2 billion in the resource-rich Indonesia's industrial processing sector over the said three-month period. About 79.8 percent of those $2.2 billion investments were meant to help Indonesia move up the production value chain of its minerals.
Prabowo will also have talks with Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam. The Indonesian leader recently held bilateral talks with Wong on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur a few weeks ago.
“There will be opportunities for us to discuss lots of potential to strengthen our bilateral ties,” Wong said at the time -- a statement that Prabowo agreed to.
The two neighboring countries took turns in hosting the annual leaders' retreat. Last year, the high-profile talks took place in the Indonesian city of Bogor.
