On June 12, 2024, Mrs. Arunee Hiam, Deputy Director-General of the Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA), and Mr. Tormarbulang Lumbantobing, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Indonesian Agency for International Development (Indonesian AID), had a bilateral discussion. The meeting was held during the Development Leaders Conference 2024 in Bali, Republic of Indonesia. Officials from TICA and Indonesian AID were also in attendance.

Mr. Tormarbulang expressed gratitude to TICA for the meeting and shared that Indonesian AID has been engaged in various development cooperation projects, especially in agriculture. Notably, there is a project in Fiji for establishing a Regional Learning Center in Rakiraki, which is currently in the procurement process. The center aims to be utilised as a training centre to share knowledge with other Pacific Island countries, and Indonesian AID has approached Thailand to explore potential collaboration in the Pacific Islands. Additionally, Indonesian AID is interested in exchanging knowledge and experiences in various fields of cooperation with TICA.

Mrs. Arunee expressed her appreciation to Indonesian Aid, and highlighted the long-standing close cooperation between Thailand and Indonesia of which the technical cooperation meeting was set up as a mechanism for bilateral cooperation. The last meeting was hosted by Indonesia in 2011. In this regard, she proposed Indonesia that Thailand is ready to host the next meeting this year. The meeting will serve as a platform for discussing bilateral and trilateral cooperation. She also shared that TICA established the Learning Center for Sustainable Development in Agriculture based on the Application of Sufficiency Economy Philosophy in many countries such as Tonga in Pacific.

Furthermore, Mrs. Arunee highlighted TICA’s focus on promoting four aspects of human security: employment, food, health, energy, and environment. For trilateral cooperation, the two sides may consider organizing training course for ASEAN member countries on global priority topics such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, air quality improvement, and waste management. The initiative would provide concrete cooperation and could be expanded to other fields in the future.

Both sides agreed to hold online discussion for to further details of the trilateral cooperation program.