Summary: ACI’s ASEAN Economic Competitiveness Analysis finds differences in the performance of Indonesia and the Philippines’ infrastructure development. Indonesia performs better in physical infrastructure, while the Philippines performs better in technological infrastructure. Such disparities are intriguing since the countries face similar geographical challenges concerning infrastructure development. The countries also have similar standards of institutional quality […]
A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia’s economy shows signs of recovery in 2021: The country has seen a 3.2 percent annual GDP growth this year, compared to a contraction of 2.1 percent a year earlier. The 2021 growth is mainly driven by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and wholesale and retail trade sectors. […]
Gone are the days when climate change was talked about in future tense – it is happening now and happening fast. With more extreme weather events battering the region, Southeast Asia (SEA) must champion not only disaster anticipation and preparedness but also disaster mitigation equally well. As energy consumption in the region is projected to […]
The ‘take, make, dispose’ approach that formed the bedrock of the linear economy has come under scrutiny with a growing focus on circular economy. With countries moving to build their own capabilities, regional groupings too have sought to address the issue collectively. As such, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has launched the Framework […]
Summary: The world economy has experienced multiple turmoils in the past three years. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the first wave of global economic decline, in which global GDP growth contracted by 3.3% in 2020. The global economy subsequently recovered in 2021, reaping an annual increase of 5.8%, amid the optimism that the arrival of vaccines […]
With proximity to Indonesia’s major trading partners, Riau Islands is one of the country’s premier manufacturing hubs, with the industry contributing over 40% to its economy in 2020. The province is home to large industrial estates such as the Nongsa Digital Park and Bintan-Batam-Karimun Free Trade Zone. In post-pandemic Indonesia, the province is a hotspot […]
Indonesia’s third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has taken the country by storm since early June 2021, proving to be one of the worst outbreaks that the world has seen. As the delta variant spreads across the densely populated areas of the country, the healthcare system faces immense pressure and is running low on oxygen […]
As Bali reopens its borders after an 18-month hiatus, how will Bali regain its economic momentum? What are the drivers of future growth and economic resilience? ACI’s recent webinar titled “Bali’s Roadmap to Recovery: Post-Pandemic Economic Strategies”, hosted on Thursday, 21 Oct 2021 in collaboration with Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha, tackled this issue in depth. Speakers […]
Indonesia’s overarching goal to expand its basic digital infrastructure first emerged in the 1990s, through the idea of the Palapa Ring project. The project aimed to provide internet access to the entirety of the 34 provinces in the archipelagic nation and was completed recently in 2019. In 2014, the percentage of households in Indonesia with […]
Summary: The global travel disruption had cascading effects on tourism and the supporting sectors in Bali. This week’s chart portrays Bali’s vulnerability to the worldwide border closure amid COVID-19 and underlines potential areas for diversification. Bali’s economy contracted by 9.3% in 2020, one of the worst-hit provinces in Indonesia. The loss of tourism revenue scraped […]
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