Organisers of the upcoming London Olympics have expressed concern over alleged “sweatshops” in Indonesia after an exposé by The Independent revealed that Indonesian factory workers had been working more 65 hours a week, for less than $0.60 per hour, to produce outfits for British athletes and volunteers participating in the world’s biggest sporting event.
Indonesia has finally regained its investment-grade rating from Moody’s Investors Services on Wednesday, more than 14 years after the Asian Financial Crisis compelled credit rating agencies to downgrade the country’s sovereign debt rating to junk status.
The decision by Moody’s comes after a similar rerating by Fitch Ratings last month, with most analysts expecting Standard & Poor’s to follow suit in the next couple of months as well.
A video of a chain-smoking 2-year-old boy in Indonesia went viral last year,
making the country an abject poster child for unbridled cigarette use among its young citizens.
The pudgy little boy, Ardi Rizal, smoked up to two packs a day,
and his parents, who had started him at 18 months, said he threw tantrums if denied.
According to NBC News, he went through a successful rehab stint at the end of last year.
But if the toddler kicked the habit, Indonesia has not.
As the nation with the world’s largest number of Muslims, Indonesia every year sends the most pilgrims to Mecca by far.
About one out of 10 believers who performed the hajj last year were Indonesian.
Some 1.2 million of the faithful are now on a government waiting list to go to Mecca,
filling this country’s annual quota through the next six years.
Indonesia is a lower middle-income economies coming under the East Asia and the Pacific region as to the classification made by the World Bank on the basis of income and region for the year 2006.
Indonesia is a multinational country, which has given the economy a serious advantage over other countries. However, this country has ongoing challenges specific to the world financial crisis. Even so, Indonesia has seen a declining public debt to Gross Domestic Product or GDP, as well as solid stewardship over the past few years that have helped the growth of the GDP. Some of the areas in specific that have experienced improvement include use of treasure bills, taxation, capital market supervision, and customs.
Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has announced a two-year moratorium on new logging concessions, part of a deal with Norway
in which Indonesia will receive up to $US1 billion ($1.2 billion) if it adheres to a letter of intent signed by the two countries yesterday.
When the regent of Lamongan, a coastal rice-growing region on the island of Java, first toured China as part of an official delegation, his eyes went wide.
Here was the future, he thought: skyscrapers and humming factories and grand highways.
When the regent of Lamongan, a coastal rice-growing region on the island of Java, first toured China as part of an official delegation, his eyes went wide.
