Katalis faces several challenges, including managing a wide range of stakeholders, coordinating across multiple sectors, and fostering strong industry engagement in Indonesia and Australia. Engaging the private sector to encourage bilateral trade and investment, especially in emerging industries, is difficult due to the challenging market entry requirements in both countries. While commercially focused, the program also works to achieve positive development outcomes, promoting inclusivity and sustainability, and focusing on women, minorities, people with disabilities, and rural communities. Effective monitoring, evaluation, and alignment with broader development goals are essential to adapt the program and create lasting impact, all while balancing economic partnerships, commercial viability and trade facilitation.

The primary objective of Katalis is to unlock the vast potential of the economic partnership between Australia and Indonesia. Katalis complements existing Australian development program activities with a commercially oriented, bilateral approach, that prioritises inclusive economic growth by also focusing on gender equality and social inclusion. The overarching goal of the program is to ensure “the benefits of IA-CEPA are maximised, supporting trade and investment, improving market access, and promoting sustainable inclusive economic growth”. It will achieve this by focusing on three interrelated breakthrough areas: (1) Market access and supporting IA-CEPA implementation; (2) Market integration and (3) Skills for recovery.

IA-CEPA Katalis aims to boost economic development initially in the Agrifood, Advanced Manufacturing, and Services sectors, but expanding to other priority sectors such as the green energy, creative economy, health and tourism, through multi-year initiatives focused on enhancing Australia-Indonesia collaboration. By improving market access, integrating markets, and advancing skills, Katalis leverages the IA-CEPA to promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth. It addresses challenges like limited market access and fragmented industry standards by fostering partnerships, strengthening industry engagement, and improving standards to support private sector development, gender equality, and social inclusion.

Key objectives of IA-CEPA Katalis include maximizing trade benefits, creating market linkages, and enhancing workforce skills for greater productivity and competitiveness. Activities so far include building industry partnerships, supporting standards alignment, facilitating mutual recognition of professional standards, and providing training platforms for the Indonesian private sector and government. These efforts ensure inclusive productivity gains, advancing gender equality and social inclusion while tackling broader development challenges.

The overarching goal of the program is to ensure the benefits of IA-CEPA are maximised, supporting trade and investment, improving market access, and promoting sustainable inclusive economic growth in Indonesia.

The key objectives of Katalis are to:

• Support both governments to implement and maximise the benefits of IA-CEPA
• Expand Market Access by identifying strategic market access opportunities to boost bilateral trade and investment, creating opportunities for economic growth.
• Strengthen Private Sector Partnerships by working with industries to support innovation in agriculture, advanced manufacturing, service industries and other priority sectors.
• Enhance Skills Development through tailored training and capacity-building for Indonesia’s private sector and government, increasing productivity, competitiveness, and supporting gender equality and social inclusion.
• Promote Inclusive Economic Growth by advancing initiatives for women’s economic empowerment, disability inclusion, the care economy, and regional representation, aligning with Aid for Trade goals and fostering sustainable, inclusive development.
• Support Industry Engagement through activities focused on building business partnerships, integrating supply chains, recognizing professional standards, collaboration and innovation, and creating a foundation for stronger, lasting economic ties and people-to-people links.