Indonesia’s Potential Trading Partners Under More Protective Global Markets During the Pandemic of COVID-19
摘要
Potential market exploration aims to increase competitiveness, expand Indonesia’s products’ exports globally, and obtain imported goods as supporting raw materials at more competitive prices. The expansion of potential trading partners is critical as a stepping stone to establishing further investment and production cooperation within a bilateral investment agreement, regional production network (RPN), and another economic diplomacy. This paper examines the possibility of investigating potential new markets for Indonesia and the existing main markets. We applied the Potential Market Composite Index (PMCI) to search for new potential markets based on several significant indicators. The PMCI is to provide an overview of the potential and performance of the destination country in issuing respective trade policies, following the direction, orientation, and competitiveness of export products. The PMCI is built using an aggregative framework and linear multivariate method. The potential country is determined by several economic conditions, trade policies, and infrastructure status of the destination country. The following indicators represent the PMCI framework of potential countries: (1) the size of the markets; (2) bilateral/regional cooperation agreements in the trade/investment sector; (3) performance of foreign direct investment (FDI); (4) the access to transportation/direct flights/direct calls; (5) status of trading partners (not as the main trading partner before the year of 2000); (6) the number of non-tariff measures (NTMs) applied by the potential trading partners to Indonesia. As a result, using the PMCI, Indonesia should expand its market to the existing main trading partner countries and potential markets such as some countries in West Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Market expansion is significant for Indonesia, especially since global competition with other countries in attracting potential trading partners is getting more challenging amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the search for potential countries is a “hedging strategy” associated with the dynamics of the global economy.