Jakarta. Indonesia recently said that members of the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) should join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade pact, thus making it an even larger trading bloc.

The RCEP today encompasses the 10 ASEAN members, as well as its dialogue partners: China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The trading pact, which makes up almost 30 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP), seeks to lift trade barriers. Sri Lanka and Hong Kong have shown interest in being part of RCEP. 

According to a ministerial press statement, top economic minister Airlangga Hartarto recently invited the six-strong GCC to be part of the RCEP at a World Economic Forum (WEF) dialogue in Riyadh. The GCC members include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar.

“ASEAN has a giant trade bloc, namely the RCEP, and this combines ASEAN countries and five other countries. If we add the GCC, it will become the world’s largest mega trade bloc,” Airlangga was quoted as saying in the statement.

“This trade bloc can facilitate all sorts of potential cooperation, including on trade, investment, digital economy, sharia finances, micro, small and medium enterprises [MSMES], youth exchanges,” Airlangga said.

The RCEP will eliminate up to 90 percent of the tariffs imposed on goods traded between its signatories over two decades of coming into effect. As of June 2023, the RCEP is in effect across all its members. Last October, the ASEAN Secretariat revealed that they were working on the procedures to let other countries join the RCEP. These procedures were expected to be ready by this year.

Airlangga also talked about a potential trade deal between ASEAN and the GCC as part of their cooperation framework. During the ASEAN-GCC’s maiden summit in Riyadh last year, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo called for the establishment of a trade framework between the two groups. The press statement wrote that Airlangga told the WEF dialogue that ASEAN and the GCC should start the negotiations for the free trade agreement.

The GCC and the Southeast Asian bloc have forged a 2024-2028 cooperation framework that lays out the possible areas of partnerships to be explored over the coming years. The document stated that the two regional groupings should explore the possibility of developing a “framework agreement” on trade and investment. Saudi’s state-owned news agency Al Arabiya reported last October that the ASEAN-GCC trade volume had topped $110 billion.