Visit Malang City & Batu City (14-15 July)

In the name of JICA survey, I visited Malang city and Batu city in East Java province in July 14-16, 2016.

This survey will search for possible cooperation and partnership relation between local government in Japan and in Indonesia to promote win-win private business development on agriculture and livestock sector.

So, there are two kinds of partnership in this survey: local government in Japan and local government in Indonesia; and government sector and private sector in each local government.

Malang city and Batu city are included as the candidate local government in Indonesia, especially in the field of fruits production, processing and marketing development. So, what will the partner candidate in Japan?

Anyway, in July 14, I visited the Office of Agriculture of Malang city to discuss with the Head at 8:30 am. Unfortunately, he was asked by Mayor to attend urgent important meeting in the City Hall. So, I had to just wait for the finish of the meeting. Maybe 1-2 hours, I think.

At last, I could meet the Head at 3 pm. He wanted me to meet the Mayor. I was very surprised at hearing it because it is usually very difficult to make appointment the local head as Governor, district head (Bupati), or Mayor.

Fortunately, thanks to the initiative of the Head of the Office of Agriculture, I met the Mayor, Bapak H. Moch. Anton. I explained about our survey and he appreciated us very much. He gave some suggestions and hints to promote next step for partnership building with local government in Japan.

What will happen in the next step? We will see it later.

2016-07-14 16.07.25

Left to Right: Bapak Wasto (Chairman of Bappeda); Me; Bapak H. Moch. Anton (Mayor); Bapak Kristiawan (Fruits Processing Expert); Bapak Hadi Santoso (Head of Office of Agriculture)