JAKARTA – Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will visit Bogor in West Java on April 29 to attend the Singapore-Indonesia Leaders’ Retreat hosted by outgoing Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
This will be PM Lee’s seventh and final Leaders’ Retreat with Mr Widodo, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement on April 26.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong is set to take over from PM Lee on May 15, while Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, having won the country’s presidential election on Feb 14, will succeed Mr Widodo in October.
At the annual meeting, Mr Widodo and PM Lee are expected to take stock of the significant progress made on bilateral cooperation during their respective tenures, the PMO said.
This includes the three landmark pacts between the two countries that were inked in January 2022 and which officially came into force in March 2024, which deal with airspace management, defence cooperation and extradition.
At the retreat, PM Lee and Mr Widodo will also endorse additional agreements in areas such as defence, digital economy, sustainability and human capital development, said the PMO.
The statement noted that both countries have made advances in bilateral cooperation in a wide variety of other areas including healthcare, trade and investment, and financial cooperation.
The Prime Minister will be accompanied on his visit by DPM Wong; Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean; Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen; Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan; Education Minister Chan Chun Sing; Social and Family Development Minister, Second Minister for Health and Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs Masagos Zulkifli; Health Minister Ong Ye Kung; and Manpower Minister and Second Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng.
Singapore has been Indonesia’s top foreign investor since 2014.
In 2023, Singapore recorded US$15.4 billion (S$21 billion) of foreign direct investment into the archipelago, and bilateral trade reached US$69 billion that year.
Both countries are also among each other’s top sources of visitor arrivals. Singapore welcomed 2.3 million tourists from Indonesia in 2023, while Indonesia saw 1.4 million tourists from Singapore that year.
