Current affairs

The Asia DX (Digital Transformation) initiative is being promoted from the perspective that contributing to the achievement of the SDGs in ASEAN is in Japan's national interest.

Jakarta's PSBB (Large Scale Social Restrictions) to prevent the spread of corona infection in Jakarta has caused the restaurant business to deteriorate. The difference is that commercial facility-type stores have high fixed costs to the extent that they can be expected to attract customers from the mall itself, while roadside stores have all the costs of attracting customers themselves, but the fixed costs are less expensive.

In Indonesia, illegal fishing by Chinese fishing boats in the EEZ near the Natuna Islands has caused a border dispute with China. The Indonesian National Army, which defends the country, is based on the Indonesian Homeland Volunteer Force, which was founded by the Imperial Japanese Army, and became deeply involved in politics during the Soekarno regime, which played a central role in the War of Independence.

The second phase of the MRT subway construction has started in Jakarta, and with the relocation of the capital city in 2024, government facilities along the line, including the Presidential Palace, will be turned into a protected area and museum, and Jakarta may become a global tourist destination that pushes the historical charm of the city and allows visitors to experience the ongoing economic development through urban development.

To promote trade and FDI between Japan and Indonesia, direct yen and rupiah rates and trade finance easing could be used to hedge risk and improve cash flows, such as through direct rupiah-rupiah exchange rate indications and access to rupiah-denominated L/C settlements and short-term bridging loans.

Gresham's Law states that keeping high-value good products in inventory and letting go of defective ones as much as possible to protect asset value and reduce the risk of lost sales opportunities is a logical economic activity and results in the elimination of good products from the distribution process.

Japan dropped to fourth place in the ranking of FDI in Indonesia by country. The omnibus law aims to improve the investment environment in terms of jobs and permits, attract foreign direct investment, add value domestically and make the product competitive in downstream industries to get into the international supply chain.

In Indonesia, fires can occur at opportune times in places where interests are at stake, and the fire at the Supreme Prosecutor's Office is also suspected of being connected to a corruption case that has been established, particularly the destruction of investigative material related to prosecutor Pinanki, who has been detained on suspicion of bribery with Joko Chandra.

Indonesia's digital advertising market is about one-fifth the size of Japan's, as is the ratio of the two countries' GDP, and this gap is expected to narrow in the future. Currently, government ministries' budgets for influencers are increasing, but there is a danger of leading democracy in the wrong direction.

However, Indonesia is also making efforts to increase foreign direct investment by building an industrial park in Batang, Central Java, and improving the investment environment through the omnibus law.

It is a fundamental part of monetary policy for a central bank to lower interest rates during a recession to motivate capital investment, but the reason why Indonesia had high interest rates during the 1998 currency crisis was because it raised interest rates to prevent the rupiah from collapsing and was promised high interest rates by the IMF after the transition to a floating exchange rate system, in a policy of high interest rates to be linked to the dollar.

The impact of the spread of the new coronavirus epidemic has increased the poverty rate in Indonesia in March 2020, and the number of people living below the poverty line is said to be 26.42 million as of March, with the increase in the number of people living below the poverty line being attributed to the impediment to economic activity due to movement restrictions.

The reason why Thailand's GDP of -1.8% in the first quarter of 2020 is more serious than Indonesia's plus 2.97% is because tourism revenue as a percentage of GDP is only 1.4% in Indonesia compared to Thailand's 12.5% in Thailand, and Indonesia has a lot of potential for tourism growth in the future.

Indonesia's antitrust enforcement agency is the independent Business Competition Monitoring Unit, KPPU, which has very strong powers to investigate and evaluate agreements that result in monopolistic conduct or unfair business competition, conduct hearings, make final decisions and impose administrative actions.

Indonesia wants to integrate the Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Rail, currently under construction, with Japan's plan to build a semi-fast line between Jakarta and Surabaya, but there is a view that it would be technically difficult to do so because the track width of the line envisioned in the project is different.

There are six issues to be considered in Indonesia's long-term national plan to develop the Jabodetabek-Punjur region as a social, environmental, and economic spatial cohesion into a functional and livable spatial structure: flooding, water source availability, sanitation and garbage issues, coastal and island reclamation issues, congestion, and capital relocation.

In Indonesia, where transactions in the used car market are thriving, prices of Japanese middle-class and lower-middle-class mass-market cars do not fall easily, falling 10% in the first year and then dropping slightly, and middle-class and upper-middle-class cars fall by about 15% in the first year, but in this year of the Corona pandemic, the decline in car sale prices has been significant.

While Indonesia's revised penal code does not legally recognize LGBT people, a conscientious sense of separation between religious norms and social activities is alive among the common people. The country's religious values have led to a network of mosques and churches that actively provide support for those in need.

Indonesia has periodic recessions, but the main factors are different each time: political factors in the riots triggered by the currency crisis (1998), religious conflicts in the bombings (2002-2004), financial problems in the Lehman Brothers collapse (2008), and illness in the corona crisis of 2020.

When I entered university in 1991, at the end of the bubble economy, land and stock prices were exploding, Mitsubishi Estate had bought the Rockefeller Center Building, a symbol of America, and the women of the one-length body-con (like the Bubbly Dance of Tomigaoka High School's dance club) were dancing at Juliana Tokyo in the waterfront bay area, waving their fans.