By Sakari Deichsel & George Gorman Indonesia’s economy saw a confidence-boosting 6.5 percent growth in GDP in 2011 fueled by a strong middle-class consumer demand and surging foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows of $19.3 billion that year. Indonesia has continued…
Indonesia
Indonesia’s Economic Inflection Point
by Ernest Z. Bower • • 2 Comments
By Ernie Bower The world has found Indonesia and it wants to invest. However, under the granular focus brought on by outstanding growth and decades of latent opportunity, Indonesia’s ambiguity about how much investment and trade it wants has been…
Congress Should Top Up Ex-Im Bank
by Murray Hiebert • • 0 Comments
By Murray Hiebert The political debate has been heated between those who want to slash federal spending to reduce the national debt and those who want to increase spending to spur the U.S. economy and create jobs. Here’s a step…
Mixed Results for Corruption Fight in Indonesia
by Murray Hiebert • • 1 Comment
By Murray Hiebert Transparency International gave Indonesia another poor grade on December 1 in the country’s ongoing battle against corruption. Indonesia scored 3 out of a possible 10 (the cleanest score) in Transparency’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), a slight…
East Asia Summit Themes in Context
by cogitASIA Staff • • 0 Comments
By Ernie Bower President Barack Obama and the leaders of 17 other countries will meet this weekend, November 19–20, at the sixth East Asia Summit (EAS) in Bali, Indonesia, the first summit in this forum to include the United States…
Video: U.S. Ambassador Carden on Pioneering the U.S. ASEAN Mission
by cogitASIA Staff • • 0 Comments
By Jeffrey D. Bean Earlier this year Ambassador David Carden was sworn in as the first U.S. Ambassador to ASEAN resident in Jakarta. Ernie Bower had a chance to discuss the trailblazing efforts of the Ambassador’s tenure earlier this week.…
Can ASEAN Integration Deliver in Defense Technology?
by cogitASIA Staff • • 0 Comments
By Guy Ben-Ari and Sneha Raghavan In May 2011, the defense ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to adopt the concept paper on ASEAN Defense Industry Collaboration (ADIC), which aims to “to encourage the development…
Bali Accord on South China Sea is Overrated
by Bonnie S. Glaser • • 7 Comments
By Bonnie Glaser Agreement between China and ASEAN on a set of guidelines to implement the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) is a welcome development, but it is doubtful that this heralds…
Governance in ASEAN: The Next Generation
by Ernest Z. Bower • • 1 Comment
By Ernie Bower This week in Hanoi, the former head of Vietnam’s state audit agency, Vu Dinh Hue, will be named the country’s new finance minister. The message to Vietnam’s state-owned enterprises and ministries with bloated budgets is clear: there…
The Wibowo Promotion: Move Along
by cogitASIA Staff • • 0 Comments
By Esther Sainsbury Natalie Sambhi believes that my recent post on the Lowy Interpreter has missed what the promotion of Lieutenant General Pramono Edhie Wibowo to Army Chief means for Australia and its diplomatic relations with Indonesia. This is in…