Aahh..Toyota to build low-cost car for Asia in Indonesia

Toyota Motor Corp and group firm Daihatsu are considering building a low-cost car in Indonesia aimed at consumers there and in neighbouring countries, a senior official at Indonesia’s industry ministry.

With vehicle sales in the United States and other developed economies still to recover to pre-financial crisis levels, Toyota and other carmakers are vying to take advantage of growing demand for inexpensive cars in emerging markets.

The car, smaller than the Etios it launched in India in 2010, will cost around 800,000-900,000 yen, the Nikkei business daily reported earlier on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Renault said it was planning a new factory in Morocco that would eventually be able to produce 350,000 cars a year under its Dacia low-cost brand.

India’s Tata Motors is expanding sales across India of its Nano, dubbed the “cheapest car in the world” with a price tag of a little over $2,000, and has touted plans to bring an electric version to Europe.

Minivehicle specialist Daihatsu, 51 percent owned by Toyota, will invest around 20 billion yen in a new factory able to build 100,000 cars annually in Indonesia, 70 percent of which it will supply to its parent company, the Nikkei said.

Production, which will be 50,000 cars in the first year, is due to begin as early as 2013, the paper said.

By bolstering output in Indonesia, Toyota aims to make the country its second big production base in Southeast Asia after Thailand, the report said.

“We view this story, if accurate, as positive for both companies,” analyst Issei Takahashi of Credit Suisse said in a note to clients.

“As Toyota had previously made no mention of a strategic emerging-market offering positioned below the Etios, this news could well heighten expectations regarding the company’s strategy for industrialised countries,” he said.

Growth in emerging markets was critical to raising Toyota’s operating margin, he said.

Shares of Toyota fell 0.1 percent to 3,905 yen in Tokyo trading, underperforming a 0.6 percent rise in the Nikkei average. Daihatsu shares rose 2 percent to 1,328 yen.

(Reuters)

http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20110216/tap-toyota-c3bb44c.html

“Statesman of The Year” at DAVOS World Economic Forum

DAVOS, Switzerland – So the five-day annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is over, more than 2,500 top politicians, bankers, business leaders, media, and academics have packed up and left, and the ethereal atmosphere of this global power elite retreat has evaporated and been replaced by the more mundane charms of a regular posh Alpine ski resort.

Veterans of this annual talkfest came away for the most part with a smile on their faces, either because they were corporate titans sitting on healthy balance sheets, or because they were government ministers who had accomplished their mission, whether it was to sell their country to foreign investors, reassure markets they knew what they were doing, or network and bond with the other power brokers to better position themselves on the international political stage.

And to be truthful, after 18 consecutive years at Davos, I would judge this to have been one of the better sessions, in terms of substance, meaning the quality of the discussions and the ability to come away with a reasonable idea of how to accurately predict global events during the coming year. In other words, a good year at Davos, for me at least, means one has had at least 50 or 60 brief conversations with people who rule or influence the planet, and then one can reasonably judge the mood of the global elite.

The mood as Davos ended can be summed up as very bullish on the economic growth story across Asia, both strangely sanguine and ultimately cynical about how the European debt crisis (meaning Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) will play out, and utterly frightened about what could happen next in Egypt and across the Middle East, in terms of both security and counter-terrorism efforts and the knock-on effects of the Egypt crisis on the world economy.

Notice that I didn’t mention much about the United States. That is because there was remarkably little discussion of either the recent Republican victories or the prospects for the U.S. economy. The visit of U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was low-key and low-impact, while the most prominent schmoozer in the corridors was Senator John Kerry, a perennial attendee at Davos who always looks like a man who enjoys the good life.

Or, just maybe, the focus of the Davos community was, as one Asian politician put it to me, “not on a big country that is still broke and has lots of problems, but on the places where the money, growth and optimism really can be found.”

A Three-Speed Global Recovery

So let’s see what the highlights were this year: In terms of the macro-economy, there was a distinct air of cautious optimism. There was outright enthusiasm for China, India, and the ten-nation ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations growing at an average rate of 6 percent, led by Indonesia and Malaysia.

Zhu Min, the World Bank’s Special Adviser, offered the pithiest prediction when he spoke of a “three-speed recovery in which the emerging markets would grow by more than six percent this year, the U.S. by three percent and the anemic and beleaguered euro-zone by less than two percent.” That seems about right.

The Chinese were out in force, doing deals, listening to proposals, and yes, throwing their weight around in that inimitably delicate yet forceful Asian way. But they were taken very, very seriously by everyone here.

The Indians were the second biggest delegation, throwing parties, boasting of their rising economy, and also doing deals and taking part in leadership debates in the most classic Davos tradition. The Indians know they have arrived. It has been five years since they made their first big splash at Davos, and they are now part of the global establishment.

Anand Sharma, the trade minister, offered his own spin on world economic history, and objected to the term “emerging economies.” He told delegates: “I would not call China and India ‘emerging’. We are ‘re-emerging’, because together we contributed 52% of the GDP of the world, until the 17th century. ?It is a re-balancing of the world economy. It is historical distortions getting corrected.”

The “Statesman of the Year” award at Davos went, by informal acclaim, to the debut of mild-mannered President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia. He presented his country, with its 6 percent growth rate and market of 235 million consumers, with restrained pride, and behaved the way a G-20 leader is supposed to, offering vision and humility.

After years of noisy talk about globalization, the Indonesian president’s speech included this moderate and well-considered passage: “We will need to work together to manage the world economy so that it functions to meet our needs, rather than satisfying our greed. This means we will need to inject more compassion into our economic and social policy; that is not only fixated on growth, but on achieving growth with equity.”

Compare that with the opening address of President Dimitri Medvedev of Russia, who went on and on about the need for “a more fair and just world of meritocracy” and “a world free of hypocrisy and double standards” and then proceeded to claim there was no proof Iran had nuclear ambitions, and you get the picture.

Nicholas Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany spent most of their energy and time here defending the euro and lashing out at speculators and bankers.

True to their nature, Sarkozy was theatrical and emotional, wildly gesticulating and exaggerating to prove his point, while Merkel was concrete, straightforward, and direct, sort of …German.

?”Chancellor Merkel and myself never – and listen to me carefully here – never will turn our backs on the Euro,” said the mercurial Sarkozy. “We will never drop the Euro. The Euro spells Europe. The Euro is Europe. We couldn’t even possibly entertain the idea – not even play with the idea of entertaining the idea. Have I been clear enough?”?

Merkel, by contrast, told the Davos crowd more succinctly that “We will defend this euro. We must keep it durably stable.” And she warned that “Debt is the greatest threat to prosperity on our continent.”

Having said that, it looks like the Germans intend to continue to object to throwing much more new money at basket case countries like Greece and Ireland, but will prefer to simply stretch out the maturities of the bonds used to rescue these eurozone members, perhaps to as much as 30 years. Some would call that cynical; I would call it realistic, especially since debt rescheduling looks like a necessity for Greece and rather soon, whether Prime Minister George Papandreou wants to admit it or not.

The only other standout debutante (aside from Indonesia’s president) at Davos this year was the articulate new prime minister of Britain, David Cameron.

He talked common sense, saying: “Yes, recovery has begun. But while economies like India, Brazil and China are steaming ahead, in Europe, the drag on growth has persisted. Indeed, Europe’s share of world output is projected to fall by just under a third in the next two decades. And no one is immune.”

And he said things the Euro-crowd doesn’t really like to express so forthrightly, or at all: “We’ve got to recognize that Europe has got to earn its way. The world doesn’t owe us a living. So let’s make the choice to do things differently, to fight for our prosperity. If we set our sights high, if we take bold decisions in deregulation, on opening up the single market, on innovation and on trade…then together we can defy the pessimists.”

Cameron impressed. He conquered the crowd with his realism.

Egypt Shocks Davos

These were the highlights of what I would call the “normal” part of the Davos proceedings. But then, in the last 48 hours of the annual meeting, the video screens and ubiquitous portable iPads starting filling up with images of tear gas and crowds of protestors and violence. The Egypt crisis had gone from uprising to potential revolution, and a frisson of fear spread through the meeting halls.

At first the Egypt crisis caught the Davos gathering off guard. Organizers scrambled to put together a panel for Saturday, business leaders kept quiet lest they rock the boat. One chairman of a multi-billion dollar company told me in hushed tones that “we have substantial interests in Egypt, but we are staying out of this one so we can continue to work with whoever takes over from Mubarak.”

Put simply, the world’s power elite was somehow unable or unwilling to react in real time to the unfolding events in Cairo. Last Friday, normally confident leaders behaved like rabbits caught in the headlights of an oncoming automobile.

The exception, of course, was the Arab delegates, whether ministers or sheikhs or private sector executives. They could speak of nothing else on Friday, a condition that finally spread a day later to many of the other delegates, including Americans, Europeans and Asians.

At first the chatter was about what this could mean to the oil price (which spiked on Monday above $100 a barrel!) and the Suez Canal and shipping, and the dollar, and the economy and equity markets. And then, as Davos drew to a close, the talk shifted to a debate about the biggest opposition party in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Who were the Brothers really? A moderate Islamic grouping that had renounced its sympathy with terrorists, despite the fact that its spiritual leader Yusuf Qaradawi was known to have been an inspiration for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? A repressed opposition party in Egypt that had been martyred by Mubarak’s vote rigging? A peaceful group of philanthropists and charitable social workers, as many like to style themselves?

As Davos ended, the consensus was moving toward fear and anxiety that a revolution or transition which eventually leads to the Muslim Brotherhood taking power, whether directly or though the vehicle of a respectable technocrat like Mohammed al-Baradei as front man, could be extremely dangerous. But the global media only started waking up to the subject on Monday, while it began to look as though both Hillary Clinton and the White House had written off Mubarak, and were now backing “an orderly transition”.

A day after Davos ended, with the protests still mounting, the newly installed Vice President Omar Suleiman announced plans to open a dialogue with all opposition parties.

On Monday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs offered a statement that was diametrically opposed to the Davos consensus when he said that in dialogue with the opposition the United States has not ruled out the involvement of the Brotherhood. But Gibbs insisted that before it could be involved, the Brotherhood had to demonstrate “an adherence to the law, adherence to nonviolence, and a willingness to part of that democratic process.”

Perhaps the most outspoken skeptic in U.S. foreign policy circles on Monday was Leslie Gelb, the former State Department official and Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter who now serves as President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign relations. In an interview with The Atlantic on Monday, Gelb voiced deep concern about the Muslim Brotherhood (see separate article), but there was, alas, no debate at Davos, which by now had closed up shop for this season.

So the hoopla in Switzerland is over, and it remains to be seen if Davos 2011 was prescient or got things wrong, on the global economy, on the euro and on Egypt. The good news is that one way or another, we won’t have to wait too long to find out. All three of these big Davos subjects should play out in real life in the very near future.

Source : TheAtlantic.com

Insect pest discovered !

Scientists with a Virginia Tech-led program have discovered the presence of the giant whitefly in western Java, the first known infestation of this pest in Asia. The scientists fear an infestation could cause widespread destruction of crops in southeastern and South Asia.

Rangaswamy Muniappan, entomologist and director of a multimillion dollar U.S. Agency for International Development-funded program at Virginia Tech, noticed the insect on a poinsettia plant along a roadside in Cipanas, Indonesia. Taxonomists soon confirmed whitefly’s presence.

Muniappan was in Indonesia with partner scientists from Clemson University and Bogor Agricultural University in Bogor, Indonesia, inspecting program progress when he noticed telltale signs of the whitefly: a sooty black mold that covers the surface of infected leaves, making photosynthesis impossible.

The giant whitefly, Aleurodicus dugesii, is a polyphagous species of Central American origin that prefers woody flowering hosts, including fruit trees and hibiscus plants. The cultivation of these ornamentals is what Indonesia’s ministry of agriculture is looking to foster as a way to create jobs in rural areas.

“Our concern is that the giant whitefly may spread to the rest of the islands in Indonesia and also to other neighboring countries in southeastern Asia and South Asia,” says Muniappan, who leads the Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program.

Infestation could cause widespread destruction of crops, as happened with the cassava mealybug in equatorial Africa in the 1980s. That disaster caused billions of dollars worth of crop damage and almost led to widespread starvation, according to Muniappan.

When Muniappan discovered the insect, he collected leaves with the whitefly on them and dropped them into alcohol vials he carries. He then sent these for identification to a specialist in whitefly taxonomy at the California Department of Agriculture, who confirmed the identification as the giant whitefly.

The giant whitefly, a pest of over 50 common ornamental plants, works by sucking sap from plants. In the process, it exudes a honeydew rich in sugars. This honeydew develops into a sooty mold, a black coating on the leaf that reduces the photosynthetic surface, eventually killing the plant. Giant whitefly nymphs compound the insult by emerging from eggs laid on the underside of leaves and producing waxy material that is visible from a distance.

Muniappan believes that the solution to this menace lies in classical biological control: introducing a species’ natural enemies. Two such enemies already exist in the United States, the parasitic wasps Idioporus affinis and Encarsiella noyesii. Muniappan says he is hopeful that using these will be a relatively easy way to manage the population of giant whiteflies.

With its tropical climate, Indonesia provides ideal conditions for the growth of ornamental plants such as the poinsettia, which are an important part of the island nation’s economy. The plants are grown for domestic consumption as well as for export. Ornamentals are big business in other Asian countries as well.

Muniappan hopes that by alerting agriculture officials, a disaster can be averted. “Scientists in countries to which the giant whitefly has not yet spread should be taking preventive measures such as informing the public and alerting quarantine officials to avoid serious economic damage,” he says.

Scientists with a Virginia Tech-led program have discovered the presence of the giant whitefly in western Java, the first known infestation of this pest in Asia. The scientists fear an infestation could cause widespread destruction of crops in southeastern and South Asia.

While the Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program led by Virginia Tech does not specifically work with ornamentals, the agricultural research being conducted under its support affects a range of crops. The project in Indonesia is one of 11 around the world managed by the program. The goal of the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded program is to develop approaches to agriculture that minimize crop losses, increase farmer income, and decrease pesticide use.

Provided by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

ASEAN in 2030

What will the Association of Southeast Asian Nations look like in the year 2030? As a durable and successful regional grouping in the developing world, ASEAN is a force for stability and cooperation in Asia. But can we take its longevity and success for granted?

ASEAN’s irrelevance or even death has been predicted several times before. At its birth in 1967, few people thought it would live to see another decade, given that the two previous attempts at regional cooperation in Southeast Asia — the Association of Southeast Asia and the MAPHILINDO (Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia) concept — ended within a few years after their creation. The Malaysia-Philippines dispute over Sabah in 1969, the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Indochina in 1975, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979, the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, have all been seen as critical blows to ASEAN. But ASEAN not only survived, it actually grew a bit stronger each time. So there is precedent, and hope, that ASEAN will be around in 2030.

But surviving is not the same as thriving. In 2030, ASEAN might keep plodding on, but will it still be a key player in regional peace, stability and prosperity in Asia? This question is more difficult to answer.

The answer depends on three key questions. First, what will ASEAN’s relations be with the great powers? ASEAN’s biggest fear is that it will be swept aside by the rise of its two most powerful immediate neighbours — China and India — and the resulting tide of great power competition will draw in the US and Japan as well. ASEAN emerged at a time when India and China had just fought a war with each other and faced major domestic challenges, including Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China. Japan in the late 1960s and 1970s was still in recovery mode, politically if not economically. The field was thus open for ASEAN to anchor regional cooperation.

How different the situation is today! China and India are racing to join Japan and the US in the great power club, and seeking their rightful place at the top of world affairs. Japan, though stagnant economically, is reorienting itself — as a ‘normal’ state — to an active political and military role in Asia.

Some things remain unchanged. China, Japan and India do cancel each other out due to their mutual mistrust. All three and the US want ASEAN to accept its leadership in Asian regional cooperation.

Some imagine a concert of powers developing in Asia, wherein China, Japan, India and the US jointly manage regional security issues. This would marginalise ASEAN. As the saying in Southeast Asia goes, the grass suffers not only when the elephants fight but also when they make love. But an Asian concert of powers would require the powers to overcome differences which are neither temporary nor trivial.

A second question about ASEAN’s future is what the state of intra-ASEAN relations will be. The ongoing skirmishes on the Thai-Cambodian border do not inspire confidence. Simmering rivalries and mistrust continue to cloud relationships between Singapore and Malaysia, Thailand and Burma, and Malaysia and Thailand. But this is a far cry from the 1960s and 1970s, and there is every reason to hope that these intra-ASEAN conflicts will not doom the organisation. They would need, however, to be managed carefully, especially with the help of existing and new mechanisms that ASEAN is currently seeking to develop.

The third question is perhaps the most important. What will the domestic political configurations of ASEAN countries look like? Will ASEAN countries become more open and democratic? Indonesia has surely taken a major leap towards democracy. But there has been a major setback in Thailand and continuing frustration with Burma. Domestic succession in many ASEAN countries remains uncertain and even volatile. Domestic turbulence can spill over borders and limit ASEAN members’ ability to contribute to the regional public good. As a regional group, ASEAN cannot shape the domestic politics of its members, but a collective commitment to participatory democracy and regionalism helps. The idea of a People’s ASEAN has thus far only meant fostering cultural exchanges and cooperation, not promoting or defending democracy (although Indonesia’s efforts through the Bali Democracy Forum are praiseworthy). ASEAN has made a tentative commitment to human rights, but this remains constrained by the resilience of the non-interference norm.

One could imagine ASEAN in 2030 either as the wise counselor of Asia, or the marginalised relic of the past. Approaching its mid-sixties, it could still be at its peak, functioning as a steady and calming influence on the rising upstarts of Asia: India and China. Or it might have lost its bearings, amidst the confusion of profound changes in the regional economic and military balance of power.

To avoid the latter, ASEAN’s current leaders must stay united, strengthen mechanisms for cooperation, steadfastly maintain a neutral broker image among the great powers and be attentive to their people’s voices. By doing so, they will have a good chance of retaining the driver’s seat for ASEAN in Asian regional cooperation.

Amitav Acharya is Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service, American University, Washington and a Senior Fellow in the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

A version of this article first appeared in The Jakarta Post on 14 February 2011.

(source : East Asia Forum)

Lewatmana.com Bagged Award Home From Paris

SparxUp winner and Google partner LewatMana.com was awarded the 2011 Netextplorateur of the year award in Paris earlier this month.

The award is given out by Netextplorateur, an organization under the appointment of the French Sénat and the Prime Minister of France, and is handed to the top 10 out of 100 global finalists chosen by the organization.

LewatMana is a crowd-sourced CCTV traffic monitoring system with dozens of cameras located in the greater Jakarta region. Anyone with a permanently attached public camera is welcomed to contribute to the service by registering to the website. Those without a camera are welcomed to report traffic conditions to the service’s Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The award recognizes web innovations and uses that may shape consumer behaviors and communications in the years to come, overseen by scientists, journalists, and academics. This year is the fourth time the awards have been handed out, having first held in 2008. Each year the organization picks out 100 of the most interesting uses of internet technologies and the top 10 gets flown to Paris to receive the award.

Hendry Soelistyo, founder of LewatMana explained in an interview with DailySocial that the selection criteria covers originality of idea, impact to the society, and how the service is seen as role model.

This international recognition is another boost to the Indonesian technology entrepreneurship community after Enterprise Ireland invited the four StartupLokal initiators to visit Ireland in March to meet with leading Irish tech/web entrepreneurs and present a selection of Indonesian startups before the Irish government and investors.

The Netexplorateur winner’s list can be found on the website along with the rest of the finalists.

Source: E27.sg

The twin will be here

Twin Otter aircraft producer De Havilland Canada (DHC) will build an aircraft factory in Indonesia in cooperation with state aircraft maker PT Dirgantara Indonesia.

Indonesia is favored on market point of view over other countries in this region to be the production base for Twin Otter aircraft, air transport director general said.

Dirgantara Indonesia, which has a factory producing turboprop aircraft and helicopters in Bandung, West Java, however, could not give details of the plan.

The capacity of the factory and the cost of the project to be built in Bandung, have yet to be decided.

Dirgantara president Budi Santoso said Indonesia needs at least 60 units of Twin Otter aircraft to serve routes to isolated areas in the country.

The 60 units include replacement for 20 units of old Twin Otter planes now in operation in the country.

(Asia Pulse)

The Echo finally reaches Egypt

Egypt crisis echoes fall of Indonesia’s Suharto

By Jonathan Head BBC News

President Suharto announced his resignation on national television in 1998

Thirteen years ago I watched another ageing autocrat suddenly challenged by a protest movement that seemed to come out of nowhere. The country was Indonesia, like Egypt a mainly Muslim nation and a strategic US ally.

President Suharto was then 76 years old. He had been in power for more than three decades, was praised for bringing stability and economic development to Indonesia, but was also strongly criticised for the repression and corruption that characterised his rule.

Like Hosni Mubarak, Suharto was a former military commander who relied on the army and an elaborate network of security agencies to buttress his hold on power.

By early 1998 he was already in trouble. The financial meltdown that started in Thailand had hit Indonesia hard. The currency had collapsed, living standards were plunging and Suharto had been forced to accept a humiliating bailout from the IMF.

There was plenty of public anger, but there was no organised opposition.

Like Mr Mubarak, President Suharto held elections carefully manipulated to ensure his own party always won.

Opponents were intimidated, bought off or jailed. So no-one saw any threat to his rule – mostly we imagined a chaotic succession scenario after his death, with his unpopular children vying to take his place.

Students killed

It all kicked off at the beginning of May.

A number of student protests had started – small, and confined to their campuses but still something new.

Then, for reasons that still aren’t clear, Suharto ended the fuel subsidy, pushing up prices by 70%. The protests escalated.

There were numerous clashes with the police, and at one elite university in Jakarta, snipers opened fire killing four students.

As in Indonesia, the uprising in Egypt has been largely leaderless

The next day rioting broke out in several Jakarta neighbourhoods, spreading across the capital. For three days there was anarchy. The police gave up and left the streets, and people looted shopping malls and attacked the ethnic Chinese minority.

The army moved in to restore order – as in Egypt it was less unpopular than the police.

At that point the protesters appeared to have run out of steam. But then came a very significant move by the army. It allowed thousands of students to occupy the Indonesian parliament – a huge blow to Suharto’s prestige. Some of his loyalists began to desert him.

The president tried to buy time by offering a new reform cabinet and promising to leave at the end of his term.

His opponents threatened a “million person march” to the presidential palace.

The prospect of bloodshed – averted when the protesters abandoned their march – was the last straw for Indonesia’s political elite.

They all refused to serve in Suharto’s cabinet, and, 11 days after the riots began, the military chief of staff told the president he had to go. He resigned immediately, handing over to his vice president. 

Today Indonesia is one of Asia’s success stories, with a fast-growing economy and a healthy democracy. So are there any lessons for Egypt?

Suharto’s swift departure took the momentum out of the protest movement, and allowed the army and established politicians to manage an orderly transfer of power.

To the disappointment of reformers it left many Suharto loyalists in top positions, and even allowed the former president to resign with dignity, his family’s wealth mostly intact – something those around President Mubarak might like to consider.

The end of Suharto’s political restrictions allowed Islamic parties to flourish, some of them pretty extreme.

For a few years militant Muslim militias rampaged in parts of Indonesia. The local al-Qaeda affiliate carried out some spectacular bomb attacks, notably in Bali in 2002 when more than 200 people died.

But 13 years on, extremism has died down and the more successful Islamic parties compete within the parliamentary system but do not dominate.

Unpredictable

There are of course big differences between the two countries.

Egypt’s geopolitical importance makes what happens there of far greater importance to the countries around it.

So far the Egyptian army appears stronger and more unified than Indonesia’s was in 1998.

There are many aspects of the Indonesian uprising we know now – like the role of rival military factions in allowing the unrest to escalate at crucial moments – that we did not know then, and the same will doubtless turn out to be true in Egypt.

Most of all, very little of what happened in Indonesia was predictable. The uprising itself was not foreseen by anyone – nor was Indonesia’s impressive stability today

 bbc.co.uk

Damn…We beat the forecast!

Financial markets and industry players welcomed the news of better-than-expected economic growth, but they were split on whether 2011 would beat last year’s achievement. Gross domestic product rose 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) announced on Monday, well above even the most optimistic forecasts. GDP growth for 2010 came in at 6.1 percent, also above most forecasts. “The GDP announcement was not a surprise. Everybody knew Indonesia’s economy would grow around 6 percent last year, so I think it did not have much influence on the market,” said David Chang, a director at UOB Kay Hian Securities. Chang was also skeptical about the economy’s chances to beat its 2010 performance, citing rising inflation and interest rate hikes.

What would drive the economy this year, he said, was greater per capita income. “People will have more money to spend, which will then be reflected in corporate earnings,” he said. In addition to the GDP data, the BPS announced on Monday that the nation’s per capita income rose to Rp 27 million ($3,000), up 13 percent from 2009. The private sector has its own worries, though general sentiment remained positive. Amelia Tjandra, marketing director for Astra Daihatsu Motor, said the government’s 6.3 percent target for economic growth this year was achievable as long it kept political and social conditions stable, “not like what happened in Egypt.”

While she said the government’s plan to prohibit private vehicles from using subsidized fuels would impact the automotive industry, of greater concern was the damage inflation and higher interest rates would have on consumers’ purchasing power. “Seventy percent of car buying schemes are done through loans. If the interest rate is higher, then there are huge possibilities people may delay buying these kind of goods,” she said.

In a worst-case scenario, Amelia said, car sales would maintain last year’s pace, which saw a record 764,710 units sold. If higher interest rates do not have a severe effect on the sector, though, she said sales could still match the Association of Indonesian Automotive Manufacturers’ (Gaikindo) forecast of 800,000 units. Artadinata Djangkar, a director at Ciputra Property, a subsidiary of property conglomerate Ciputra Development, said he believed the economy could do even better than 2010. “Looking at last year, I believe investment will keep rising and household consumption will remain strong,” he said. “Yes, there is an expectation of higher interest rates as well as inflationary pressures, but as long as the rate hike is done gradually, I don’t think it will have hurt growth.

In the property sector, housing loans have been way above the BI rate, at 9 percent to 9.5 percent, but I believe people will still buy as their incomes rise and the economy grows.” Fetty Kwartati, corporate secretary and head of investor relations at Mitra Adi Perkasa, said the prospects for the economy and the retail sector were good. “The GDP growth means the spending power of the middle and upper class is increasing,” she said.

Additional reporting by Francezka Nangoy & Shirley Christie

5 reasons to visit Solo city

Solo is a city in Central Java, Indonesia. It is well known for its cultural heritage and its participation in Indonesia’s history. As a vacation place, Solo is a really good place to go to.

Here’s why you need to go to Solo.

1. You’re A Food Traveler

If you are a food traveler, food blogger, culinary adventurer, or you just enjoy good food, you’d love this place. Solo is a heaven for food lover in Indonesia. It has lots of traditional food which would enrich your food tasting experience. You can find many restaurants, cafe, hawker food centers and many street food in this city, from traditional to international food.

Here’s my recommendation. You can go to GALABO, a very well known hawker center in Solo, where many traditional food sellers are gathered in an open space spot. In this place you will be able to try as many food as you would love to, and be entertained with traditional music performances.

Yes, you can go to Windu Djenar Antiques Marketplace in Ngarsopuro. A well known place to go to if you want to buy some artworks. If you’re good enough you can haggle the prices to the lowest but if you can’t, well… it’s cheap anyway. In this marketplace you can find lots of arts shops selling from furnitures,wayang (puppets), keris (traditional daggers) and so much more.

You found it hard to find this place? Ask the nearest local people, they will show you how to get there. By the way, if they don’t understand what you’re talking about, you may ask about Pasar Triwindu. All the same.

3. You’re Fashion Conscious

You must have heard about Batik. Batik is one of Indonesian’s traditional art of painting and coloring cloths. You can find many different Batik patterns in many cities in Indonesia, but Solo is already well known for its Batik Solo. The best thing is, you can enjoy Solo Batik Carnival and Solo Batik Fashion Festival which will be held in Solo occasionally. You can check out their events calendar to know when the Batik Fashion would be held next year.

Since Batik is very well known in Solo, you can not only buy Batik here. You can also visit their Batik Museum, and the Kampung Batik. You can see how Batik is made, and maybe if you’re interested you can take a short course to make your own Batik.

4. You’re A Backpacker

Why? Because everything in Solo is very cheap. You can enter a museum for less than USD 2, and eat for less than USD 3, and take a becak (traditional cab) or walk (because the government facilitate the pedestrians with walking street in protocols streets), and also find affordable hotels, motels and also home stay and guest houses. You will have hundreds of options of cheap accommodations here in Solo, so you don’t have to worry about how much you will spend here.

If you need guidance, you don’t have to be afraid. You don’t need to take a city tour as well since you can find a Tourist Information Center in Jalan Slamet Riyadi, the main street in Solo. Backpacking in Solo is really fun too, because there’s actually lots of places to go.

5. You’re Enjoying Performing Arts

You can download the Calendar of Cultural Events in the government’s official website. You’ll find that in Solo there are lots of performing arts held every weeks. Not only the regular events, like shadow puppets in every weekends and traditional dance every other weeks, but also the events that is held occasionally like SIEM (Solo International Ethnic Music) Festival, and SIPA (Solo International Performing Arts) Festival.

Not only performing arts, but the cultural events like the traditional parades, the people celebration on the city square, and many more events you can enjoy in Solo.

www.trifter.com

Willkommen auf Indonesien, Audi

When someone says about German cars, many good things come to my mind. Strength, reliability, quality, speed, endurance,…..many more good things. All German brands have those, you name it…Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, VW, Opel, and Audi. (is there any more?).

Well, VW had previously confirmed that they’ll setup a plant in Indonesia. Now, Audi.

The German premium carmaker is working with INDOMOBIL/Garuda Mataram Motor to assemble Audi A4 1.8 TFSI and A6 2.0 TFSI cars in the capital city Jakarta. Around 2,700 cars will be assembled there by 2015, including 2,000 Audi A4 models, for the Indonesian market. The first A4 and A6 models were delivered to Indonesian customers in January.

Audi is stepping up the pace in Asian markets. As one of the most important countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia is one of Asia’s most dynamic growth regions.

In total around 2,700 A4 and A6 cars will be built in Jakarta by 2015. At first Indonesian customers will be served by three Audi sites in the country. In the future, the company wants to expand its dealership network and strengthen its position in ASEAN countries, where Audi is considered the fastest-growing premium brand.

The Indonesian car market is forecast to grow by 15 percent this year, while sales in the premium segment are expected to double over the next five years.