FCDO Development Director: Indonesia & Minister-Counsellor Development in UK Mission to ASEAN

Join us as we host Amanda McLoughlin, FCDO Development Director in Indonesia, as well as Minister-Counsellor Development for the UK Mission ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations), who will present FCDO’s development strategy, programming and pipeline of opportunities in Indonesia and in partnership with the ASEAN Secretariat.

In the first part of her presentation, Amanda will offer an overview of Indonesia and cover the development strategy in Indonesia in her capacity as FCDO Development Director. Indonesia is a Lower Middle-Income Country and projected to be a top 5 economy by the 2040s. Indonesia is crucial to achieving global goals on climate change and biodiversity, as one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases and also being vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

As a result, FCDO priorities in Indonesia are green growth, human capital development and trade and investment, as per the UK-Indonesia Partnership Roadmap 2022-2024, which cements collaboration between the two countries. The three major bi-lateral programmes focus on low carbon development, renewable energy transition and forest and land management. For 2024-2025, the FCDO indicative ODA budget for Indonesia is £28 million, up from £12.2 million in the previous year.

In the second part of her presentation, Amanda will present the governance of the UK Mission to ASEAN, where she is Minister-Counsellor Development. The UK Mission to ASEAN aims to deepen UK engagement with ASEAN, building on existing political-security, economic and socio-cultural collaboration. The Plan of Action (POA) to Implement the ASEAN-United Kingdom Dialogue Partnership (2022-2026) was adopted in August 2022 and guides the implementation of the goals and objectives partnership. The UK was accepted as a Dialogue Partner of ASEAN in August 2021 and is the first dialogue partner included by ASEAN in 25 years. This is an important part of the UK’s tilt towards the Indo-Pacific, as per the 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.

In more detail, the goals and objectives of the ASEAN-United Kingdom Dialogue Partnership are:

1. Political and Security Cooperation – including Political-Security Cooperation and Dialogue; Peace and Reconciliation; Transnational Crime and Other Non-Traditional Security Issues; Maritime Cooperation; Good Governance and Human Rights; Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.

2. Economic Cooperation – including Regional Economic Integration; Trade and Investment; Finance; Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs); Information Communications Technology (ICT) and Digital Integration; Tourism; Energy; Agriculture and Forestry; Science, Technology and Innovation.

3. Socio-cultural cooperation - including disaster management and humanitarian assistance; Education, vocational training and labour; People-to-people exchanges, Sports, arts, culture; Social inclusion and gender; Global and regional public health; Environment and climate change; Civil service.

4. Cross-pillars cooperation - in Connectivity; Smart cities; Cyber security; Narrowing the development gap; Development cooperation.

5. ASEAN Institutional Strengthening.

Agenda:

BEI Introduction: 10 min

Presentation from Amanda McLoughlin OBE: 30/40 min

Q&A: 40 min