Indonesia’s economy grew last year at the fastest pace since before the Asian financial crisis as rising investment and domestic spending countered a slowdown in export demand due to Europe’s debt crisis.
GDP rose 6.46 percent last year, the statistics bureau said in Jakarta yesterday, after a revised 6.2 percent gain the previous year. The economy expanded 6.49 percent last quarter from a year earlier.
Southeast Asia’s largest economy has outperformed neighbors, including Thailand and the Philippines, as two rate cuts in the last quarter aided Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s efforts to boost GDP by an average 6.6 percent a year. The country regained investment-grade ratings from Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings after 14 years in recent weeks, boosting investment prospects as it plans transport and utility projects.
“Indonesia remains the standout in Asia,” said Chua Hak Bin (蔡學敏), a Singapore-based economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. While growth will probably ease to about 6 percent this year on weaker external demand, “robust consumer spending and strengthening infrastructure and foreign investment will support growth,” he said.
The nation’s currency has advanced about 1 percent against the US dollar this year after the Moody’s and Fitch upgrades. The rupiah traded little changed at 8,988 per US dollar as of 11:13am in Jakarta yesterday.
The country’s growth last year was the fastest since 1996, according to IMF data. The US$707 billion economy has expanded more than 6 percent for five straight quarters, showing it’s weathering a decline in global demand that has hurt growth across Asia.
South Korea’s economy grew the least in two years last quarter and China reported last month its weakest expansion in 10 quarters. Philippine GDP rose 3.7 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, while Thailand’s grew 3.5 percent in the third quarter. Singapore’s economy shrank in the fourth quarter from the previous three months.
“Indonesia’s economy is still resilient amid the global slowdown even as other countries in Asia have started contracting,” Destry Damayanti, chief economist at PT Bank Mandiri, said in Jakarta yesterday. “To minimize the impact of the global slowdown, the government needs to push state spending as it won’t be healthy if we push private consumption to boost the GDP further.”
Yudhoyono plans to boost government capital spending by 19 percent to 168 trillion rupiah (US$19 billion) this year to improve infrastructure, such as railways, airports and roads. Indonesia’s parliament approved in December a land-acquisition bill that will allow the government to accelerate projects.
Investment in the three months ended Dec. 31 rose 19 percent from a year earlier, according to the Investment Coordinating Board. For last year as a whole, investment gained 21 percent from a year earlier.
Suzuki Motor Corp, the third-biggest carmaker in Indonesia, will spend ¥60 billion (US$782 million) to increase capacity in the Southeast Asian nation, including setting up another factory to build engines, it said last month.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day