Ambassador: Indonesia-Canada CEPA to be ratified this year

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Canada’s Ambassador to Indonesia, Jess Dutton, said that the Indonesia-Canada Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) would be ratified this year. He made the remarks on the sidelines of the ‘Speed Mentoring in Celebration of International Women’s Day 2026’ event organised by the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta, on Wednesday. ‘We expect that the agreement will be ratified at some point this year. I think every domestic process, the ratification process, is proceeding as it should,’ the ambassador said. Ambassador Dutton also noted that from Canada’s perspective, women-led businesses and MSMEs, including indigenous groups, should have opportunities in every trade agreement, and this is part of CEPA. The agreement also provides an ecotechnologies package to help the Indonesian government implement regulatory adjustments and other necessary changes, while ensuring the agreement is accessible and useable broadly by all parties, he said. He added that Canada has several projects supporting the agreement targeting women-led MSMEs to help them enhance skills and capacity to penetrate export markets. The ambassador stated that the Canadian government has a priority to double non-U.S. trade by 50 percent within ten years. ‘There is a lot of work to be done, and countries such as Indonesia, China, other ASEAN countries, and India will be very important for us to achieve this goal in the next ten years,’ he said. When asked about Indonesia’s accession process as a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the ambassador said that Indonesia is undergoing the normal process that countries must go through to join. ‘We certainly welcome and see a great value in Indonesia joining the CPTPP,’ he said again. Negotiations for the Indonesia-Canada CEPA were substantively completed on 15 November 2024, and on 2 December 2024, Indonesia and Canada agreed on several points in the agreement. Indonesia sent an official accession request letter to CPTPP on 19 September 2024. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a multilateral free-trade agreement involving several countries in the Asia-Pacific region and aims to enhance liberalisation of trade and investment among its member countries.