Jakarta. Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul set foot in Jakarta on Monday at around 4 p.m. for bilateral trade talks amid Bangkok’s crude purchases.

He directly headed to the palace to meet President Prabowo Subianto after landing. This marks the first visit to Indonesia by a Thai prime minister in 15 years. The Thai government has confirmed that trade and investment will be on the agenda. It is unclear at this time whether they will unveil new business deals.

Food security and ASEAN-related cooperation are expected to be major talking points.

“The two leaders will also announce the Roadmap on Strategic Partnership 2026-2030,” a statement by the Thai Foreign Ministry reads.

Earlier that day, the government-run statistics agency BPS announced that Thailand was buying most of Indonesia’s crude exports in the first half of 2026. Bangkok accounted for 88.81% of those purchases, followed by Malaysia and China. Indonesia did not sell any crude to foreign markets in some months, while the monthly export peaked at $133 million in March.

Indonesia's annual trade with Thailand had been hovering around the $17 billion mark over the past three years, government data showed. Jakarta's deficit with Bangkok shrunk sharply from $2 billion in 2024 to just $140.6 million the following year. 

The Prabowo-Anutin meeting is taking place amid ASEAN’s push for its members to trade more with one another. The Southeast Asian bloc is aiming to increase the intra-ASEAN trade of its total commerce from the current 21% to 35%.

“We need to trade more among ourselves,” the group's secretary-general Kao Kim Hourn recently told reporters in Manila.