Indonesia, Iran agree to boost cooperation on fighting terrorism, trade, investment

The governments of Indonesia and Iran plan to jointly intensify efforts to combat terrorism, scale up trade volume and investment.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani met at a bilateral meeting at the sideline of Asian African Conference in Jakarta on Thursday and vowed to jointly continue effort to prevent and fight radicalism, according to Indonesian Cabinet Secretary Andi Widjajanto, who presented at the meeting.

"The violence conducted by terrorist group on behalf of religion must be combated through deep cooperation among countries, " he said after the meeting.

Both Indonesia and Iran has major Muslim population.

Indonesia has experienced a series of terrorist strikes since 2000, including Bali bombings, JW Marriot Hotel explosion in Jakarta, and the Australian embassy bombing that killed dozens of people.

Although Indonesia has not witnessed major suicide bombings in recent years, small scale-terrorist strikes and the danger of influence of IS radical group has emerged in the vast archipelago country.

On trade, the secretary said that efforts to scale up the two countries' trade volume, which has been scaling down recently are badly needed.

"The trend of the two way trade of the countries is down recently. Hence, there has to be an attempt carried out by the two countries to lift the trade volume," said Widjajanto.

Iranian investors are ready to invest in infrastructure and energy sector in the biggest economy in Southeast Asia, he said.

"Iranian private sectors are ready to enter Indonesia," he said.

Indonesia has offered foreign investors to take part in its 35, 000 MW power plant projects.

President Widodo, who came into office in October, 2014, aims to build massive infrastructure and has ease procedure of investment in Indonesia to help achieve an average of economic growth of above 7 percent annually within his five years term.

Contribution of investment in Asia and Africa rose sharply from 13.2 percent in 2012 to 41.5 percent in 2013.

President Widodo said that now is the time for the private sector to take bigger roles in the two regions. Endi