English to Be Omitted From Primary (Grammar) School Education Curriculum ?

Just when I though there might be hope for Indonesia in the recent news that the Pancasila will be re-instituted in schools and in government, Indonesia takes FIVE steps backwards with this implementation proposal of cutting or "trimming" the following core subject areas from primary or grammar school education curriculum:

Planned to be cut or "trimmed" are:

• Math

• Science 

• Social Studies

• Local Content

• Self Development

• English

I don't have a problem with cutting English (and that better be American English not UK or Australian English) from primary or grammar school education curriculum in favor of focusing on Indonesian bahasa language skills FIRST, which makes total logical sense; however, what in the #%@+ is the Education and Cultural Minister of Indonesia thinking when he proposes to cut or "trim" math and science ??!!

Click here to read full article from the Jakarta Post

 

Pancasila - Practice What You Preach !

I have written and observed in previous articles that Indonesia's "Pancasila" was a meaningless and hypocritical ideal that was not practiced, upheld or affirmed by the government and society of the Republic of Indonesia. 

The Indonesian Government bases its ruling philosophy on the Pancasila or Five Principles as laid down in the Preamble to the country’s 1945 Constitution. 

They are:

1. Belief in one God. 
2. Just and civilized humanity.
3. Unity of Indonesia (through diversity of its peoples).
4. Sovereignty of the people.
5. Social Justice.



I am absolutely delighted to read the latest news report that Pancasila courses will once again be re-instituted in schools and in government. 

Click here to read the full article from the Jakarta Globe.

Indonesians LOVE Their BlackBerry or "BB" Smartphones

Indonesians definitely LOVE their BlackBerries or “BB’s” as they are known or referred to in Indonesia. While the rest of the modern world has given up their antiquated “BB’s” and moved on to the iPhone, Android or Samsung Galaxy products; Indonesians still covet their “BB”.  You might actually be ridiculed or put to shame if you pull out a BB in America.  In  government employment or Federal civil service and corporate America (where the BB all began) and even in the White House now, the new standard or preferred device is an iOS or Android based platform device.

BlackBerry’s manufacturer, Research in Motion or RIM, will soon be unveiling a new BB product for the Indonesian market which will bring capabilities of doing e-commerce transactions directly from within the BBM platform.  E-Commerce is definitely an area where Indonesia needs much technological and cultural improvements.  But to have consumer confidence in e-commerce you need to have outstanding customer service which is woefully lacking in Indonesia. 

See full article below from the Jakarta Post for full details on the new BB 10 devices coming out soon for the Indonesia market:

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Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Thorsten Heins tickled curiosity when he hinted “think about transacting money” while discussing the future capabilities of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) during a visit to Jakarta on Thursday.

Heins said RIM was continuously innovating new services for the messenger service to make it “a very strong platform not just for communication, but also to make it a strong platform for [e-commerce]”.

“Think about transacting money. This is one element in which you could have a huge BBM population in Indonesia transferring money from one partner to another,” he said. Heins added that the heavy usage of BBM by BlackBerry smartphone owners in Indonesia made the country “so important” as an “innovation ground for BBM”.

“So it is very important for us to be here and innovating on the BlackBerry Messenger in Indonesia,” he told The Jakarta Post during a limited press meet.

According to Heins, the next version of the messenger which would appear in the all new BlackBerry 10 platform would sport “enhanced communication activities” beyond “just texting”.

Indonesian BBM users often use the service to buy and sell goods. Sellers often create BBM groups through which they sell goods, including fashion items. Yet, buyers still have to use conventional means, such as cash transfers through banks, as payment methods.

“We certainly want to grow stronger in Indonesia and we want to contribute to the economic wealth of Indonesia. The main purpose of doing this is to keep growing our BBM communities with new services and keep them on BBM by innovating and offering new opportunities for them,” he said.

However, he declined to give further details on how exactly the messenger would support e-commerce activities. “I want to keep a few surprises for the Indonesian consumer as well,” Heins said.

He added that the messenger service was RIM’s “strong foothold” that would facilitate the company to grow beyond their current market share in the country.

“Growing from a 56 percent market share is really quite a challenge, but make no mistake, [we will be] first defending our market share and building new services,” he stated.

RIM is facing tough competition from device manufacturers, including Samsung with their Android-based Galaxy smartphones.

A study by the International Data Corporation (IDC) points out that although BlackBerry still holds the crown in the smartphone market, Android wins the operating system popularity contest with 52 percent market share.

Heins said Indonesia was among the first countries to see the BlackBerry 10, as the country was one of RIM’s biggest markets contributing 8 percent to the company’s global revenue.
RIM devices running on BlackBerry 10 will enter the Indonesian market in the first quarter of 2013, he said. “The first countries to receive the BlackBerry 10 are our most important and biggest markets, and we aim to strongly support those markets,” he said.

He added that the BlackBerry 10 platform would run on a wide range of devices, from full touch to touch-and-type hybrids. The platform would also be available on devices with various price points, he said.

“You’ll probably see within an eight-week time space, a full touch device and a QWERTY-touch device,” he said of the first few models which would hit the shelves.

He added that he had met the major telecommunication operators —Telkomsel, Indosat and XL — as well as retailers to “show them what it [BlackBerry 10] is all about, and get them excited about BlackBerry 10”.

The response, he said, had been good because operators preferred having a wide choice of platforms, apart from Android and Apple’s iOS.

“We’re very confident about launching in quarter one and getting good traction with BlackBerry 10,” he said.

Indonesian Haute Couture & Fashion Industry

Here’s another good article from The Wall Street Journal which highlights the creative capabilities of the Indonesian fashion industry.

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JAKARTA–A new breed of designers is seeking to blend Islamic modesty with cutting-edge style to turn Indonesia into a global center of Islamic fashion.

Associated Press - Models present creations of designer Dian Pelangi during the Indonesia Fashion Week in Jakarta in February.

The idea may seem like a bad fit for some fashion mavens, who when thinking of Islamic fashion usually picture drab black or white cloths used to cloak female beauty rather than celebrate it.

But the Islamic-fashion industry has taken off in recent years as designers look for ways to incorporate the bold colors and rich textile traditions prevalent in some Islamic societies while still maintaining sufficient modesty to adhere to Muslim mores.

Indonesia, as the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, is already one of the main players, with a local fashion industry now estimated to be worth $6.6 billion dollars a year. But local designers and retailers – led by an industry group called the Indonesian Islamic Fashion Consortium – are hoping to expand the Islamic fashion component of the industry even more by drawing up a road map to make Indonesia the “capital” of global Islamic fashion by 2020.

Right now, Malaysia, Thailand and France are among the leading Islamic fashion hubs, industry officials say.

For the past two years, Indonesia’s consortium has embarked on road shows in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to introduce Indonesian Islamic fashion designers to the outside world. Its members have toured Indonesia’s provinces and organized workshops for local entrepreneurs and designers on marketing and production.

It has also organized an annual Indonesian Islamic Fashion Fair and, for the first time last year, a national Muslim beauty pageant.

“The creativity of these young (Indonesian) designers is endless,” said Jetti Hadi, editor-in-chief of local Islamic fashion magazine Noor and a co-founder of the consortium. “Their designs are fashionable but still adhere to the Islamic rules of modesty, which means that the clothes are loose-fitting and do not reveal the shape of women’s bodies.”

The Indonesian pavilion at the International Fair of the Muslim World in Paris last year attracted more than 2,000 visitors, Ms. Hadi said. Back at home, there were 164 booths at an Islamic fashion show in Jakarta this year, compared to only 30 booths two years earlier, she said.

Meanwhile, at this year’s Muslim beauty pageant, known as the World Muslim Beauty Contest, more than 750 women participated. Women from as far away as the Netherlands, Germany and Australia and from various professions such as lawyers, engineers and athletes applied to take part in the contest, but only 20 made it to the final on September 15 and all of them except for one are Indonesian.

Participants were judged not only by their beauty, but also their ability to read the Koran in Arabic and other Islamic knowledge as well as their social activities. Most importantly, they were required to wear Muslim clothing. Judges voted environmental activist and entrepreneur Nina Septiani as the winner of the crown.

“Whenever people around the world hear about terror attacks (conducted by Islamist militants), the image of Islam is tarnished somewhat. We want to change the perception that Muslims are extreme,” said Aries Muftie, a member of the jury, and an expert on Islamic finance.

Long known as a relatively secular Muslim nation, Indonesia has seen an increase in the number of women wearing hijab, or Islamic dress in recent years, which some analysts have attributed to rising Islamic conservativeness.

But as that has happened, it has also increased the demand for designers to help add more variety to the attire. It has also led to a mushrooming of online shops and boutiques that cater to Islamic fashionistas, known locally as hijabers. Entrepreneurs use popular social networking sites such as Facebook FB +0.01%, Twitter and Multiply as well as local online marketplaces to promote their items.

A rising middle class in Southeast Asia’s largest economy has also fueled a boom in the domestic fashion industry.

The sharia unit of the state-owned Bank Rakyat Indonesia BBRI.JK +2.00% has embraced the Muslim fashion aficionados by issuing a debit card that also serves as a membership card for the “Hijabers Community,” which has 77,000 “likes” on Facebook and almost 57,000 followers on Twitter.

For aspiring entrepreneurs and designers like Jakarta-based Rika Septiana, Facebook provides an opportunity to start a business without having to rent space. Armed with a laptop and an Internet connection, Ms. Septiana started her online Islamic fashion shop in 2010, offering hand-stitched headscarves, necklaces, hand-made crochet flower brooches and other accessories popular among hijabers.

She said business is good enough that she’s thinking of giving up her other job as a secretary at a foreign company and turning to designing full-time.

“I have a lot of ideas that I have yet to put into reality. Also working from home means I can have more time with my children,” she said.

Despite the proliferation of designers, it’s still not fully clear how much of an impact Indonesian designers are having on the Muslim world at large, as statistics are hard to come by. Export numbers are difficult to estimate because most transactions with overseas buyers are conducted individually and aren’t reported to national authorities.

Nevertheless, more and more Malaysians and Singaporeans are now traveling to Indonesia to sample its styles, says Irna Dewi, a manager at Mosaict Hijabstore, a popular Islamic fashion chain that caters to middle-class customers.

Indeed, Indonesia is increasingly becoming known as a trendsetter for Muslim fashion styles, says Annisa, an Islamic fashion observer who like many Indonesians goes by one name and writes for www.fashionesedaily.com, a local fashion website.

“The current trend incorporates bold colors, bold patterns and cutting-edge designs,” she said, which together show that “Indonesian Muslim women have become more expressive and confident in hijab.” At a recent Islamic fashion show, for instance, models walked the runway wearing bright-colored tie dye blouses combined with long skirts of floral-patterned songket, a hand-woven fabric from Sumatra island.

They also put on bold accessories such as huge beaded necklaces, oversized bangles and headscarves embroidered with Swarovski stones.

Real Property Market Forecast - Jakarta Metro Area

Here’s a great article from the Wall Street Journal below that gives a positive outlook for the real property market in the greater Jakarta metro area.

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JAKARTA–Fifteen years after the Asian financial crisis sent overheated Indonesian property markets tumbling, the archipelago nation’s real-estate markets are soaring again–just as economic storm clouds gather across the world.

By some measures, Jakarta is among the hottest property markets in Asia. Asking prices for condominiums in central Jakarta have shot up nearly 12% since the second half of 2011, according to Knight Frank, a property consultancy, and more than 50% since late 2008. The city’s office market, meanwhile, is one of world’s tightest, with “grade A” buildings reporting occupancy levels of 98.1%, compared to 92% in Singapore and 85% in Kuala Lumpur, according to property firm Jones Lang LaSalle JLL +0.91%.

Developers are rolling out some of the biggest new projects Jakarta has ever seen, especially Signature Tower, a 111-story building developed by PT Grahamas Adisentosa, a subsidiary of tycoon Tomy Winata’s Artha Graha group. The tower, with an estimated building cost of US$2 billion, will be the world’s fifth-tallest if completed.

Real-estate exuberance has also spread to other Indonesian markets, including the iconic tourist island of Bali. Property analysts say land prices have jumped 50% during the past year in the touristy Seminyak area, where many new bars, hotels and malls are located.

Developers are also looking to second-tier cities in Indonesia, where commodity-price gains in recent years have pushed incomes higher. Michael Riady’s PT Lippo Karawaci LPKR.JK 0.00% in late September announced it was building 13 shopping malls, including in Bali, Medan and Surabaya.

All the latest enthusiasm marks a dramatic turnaround from a decade ago, when many people moved out of Jakarta, construction came to a standstill and offices in the capital were only about 70% occupied, as Southeast Asia’s largest economy struggled to recover from an emerging-markets meltdown. It also marks a big snap back from the short-lived pain caused by the global financial crisis of 2008-09, when local property markets slowed sharply–but briefly–before a blazing rebound in 2010 and beyond. (Read an article about the plan to build 1,000 apartment towers by 2011.)

Few analysts expect a repeat of those episodes, given the fact that Indonesia’s economy is still posting strong economic growth by historical standards. But it’s possible the pace of residential price gains and rent increases could slow, especially if Chinese demand for Indonesia’s core commodity exports doesn’t rebound soon.

For now, developers are planning to charge ahead with plans to add hundreds of thousands of square meters of new office space in the next half-decade. This is almost twice the building work of the years leading up the 1997-98 crisis, though the pool of available office tenants is larger now. They’re also cranking up construction of condominiums, hotels and shopping malls.

One of the swankiest developments is the Ciputra World project in South Jakarta’s trendy Kuningan area. The project, developed by Indonesia’s PT Ciputra Property TBK, will include a shopping mall covering an area of 130,000 square feet, Raffles and W-brand hotels, condominiums, an office tower, and even a Ciputra Art Museum.

The Lippo Group, meanwhile, has embarked on a project called the St. Moritz over 11.4 hectares of land that includes a newly completed luxury apartment block called the St. Moritz Penthouse & Residences and a wedding chapel, a hospital, an international school, an office tower and spa developments. A “presidential suite” tower launched in May 2012 will include units with private gardens and open-plan hot tubs facing the sky.

The Signature Tower, meanwhile, is set to include a six-star luxury hotel with 300 rooms, grade-A office space and conference facilities.

Many property analysts say the Signature Tower–which is supposed to start construction later this year–will never take off, much like the Nakheel Harbour and Tower in Dubai that was proposed and then later canceled in 2010 owing to the last global downturn.

But there are also some property investors who believe the time is now for Indonesia to break through with some highly ambitious projects that draw more international attention, especially ones located on prime real estate like Signature Tower, which is planned in the Sudirman business district where many of Jakarta’s most prestigious addresses are located.

“[The developers] have been trying to build that tower since the ‘90s, and the supply would be very large,” said Fakky Ismail Hidayat, associate director at Knight Frank’s Indonesia branch, who used to work with the Signature Tower’s developers years ago. “But prospects are still good.”

Many foreign companies are still expanding their operations in Indonesia, despite economic uncertainties elsewhere Google Inc. GOOG -0.51% recently opened an office in Jakarta, while Tony Fernandes’s AirAsia 5099.KU -0.33% budget airline recently moved its regional headquarters away to Jakarta from Kuala Lumpur. A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia found that 25% of American companies plan on expanding their operations in Indonesia, compared with just 4% in Singapore, citing Jakarta’s relatively low costs versus other cities.

Grade-A office rents, while still some of the lowest across Asian cities, have jumped to 175,000 rupiah, or US$18 a square meter compared with 100,000 rupiah at the end of 2010. Meanwhile, “middle-grade” condominiums–those that sell for between 10 million and 15 million rupiah per square meter–are selling especially quickly, analysts say, with developers adding more than 6,000 units to the market this year.

New Real Property Down Payment Requirements Resulting in Declining Sales

Here’s a good article from the Jakarta Globe describing the current state affairs with the housing or real property market in Jakarta.  Indonesian banks and mortgage lenders are following new lending guidelines that now require the borrower or home purchaser to put down a 30% minimum down payment (up from the previous prevailing rate of 20%).  The loan to value (LTV) ratio is now 70/30 as opposed to the 80/20 previously.  This obviously means that borrowers will now have to dig even deeper into their savings or wallets to throw down the required 30% down payment. 

Since mortgage loan terms in Indonesia are between 10 -15 years in duration (as opposed to 30 year loans in America) this will mean that with the additional 10% down payment the borrower will have a lower monthly mortgage payment and have the loan amortized (killed off) or paid in full in a slightly shorter time frame; but the additional 10% requirement up to 30% now will also have adverse economic consequences:

• slumping or softening property sales.

• home value appreciation or owner/seller equity being affected by slow or declining home sales or "comps".

• first time home buyers being effectively priced out of the market as much greater cash reserves are now required to obtain mortgage financing.

• a possible higher demand for properties on the secondary or re-sales market.

• the possibility of the rise or prevalence of SAF (Seller Assisted Financing) or the owner/seller of the property holding a second deed of trust on the property.

 

The good side of all this, despite the difficulties of some people coming up with the additional 10% down payment, will result in a favorable buyers’ or investors’ market with owner/seller or developer making all kinds of concessions to get a sales contract to go through and stabilized or even backward sliding home prices.  

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Here now below is the article:

Demand for residential properties in Jakarta is expected to drop in the second half of this year and into early next year after Bank Indonesia increased the minimum amount for a down payment needed to purchase a home.

“More of an impact will be seen in the second half of this year or early next year,” said Arief Rahardjo, head of research at Cushman & Wakefield, a property consultancy firm. “I think the demand will continue to decline, but how bad will it be, we don’t know yet.”

In a media briefing on Thursday, he said that in the first half of the year, demand in Greater Jakarta’s premium residential market — with prices of Rp 400 million ($42,000) and above — saw a decline.

Cushman & Wakefield’s report shows that in the first half this year, the average number of houses sold every month fell 32 percent, to 148.6 units from 180.2 units a year earlier.

In terms of value, there was a 29 percent growth, to Rp 149.8 billion, in the average monthly take up as prices of land and houses continued to increase. The growth in housing demand exceeds supply, indicating a 91.8 percent sales rate in the first half, the report said.

Bank Indonesia on June 15 imposed a 30 percent minimum down payment on bank loans for houses that are larger than 70 square meters. (753.5 sq ft. - the size of a very small studio apartment or condo).

Arief said that since the implementation, some developers have claimed that home transactions declined along with processed applications of home loans.

“Some banks admitted that they see some softening in mortgage applications,” Arief claimed.

He said some banks lowered their mortgage rates to attract more home buyers to apply for mortgages.

Arief said that Bank Mandiri in September offered a fixed interest rate of 6.75 percent for the first two years, from 8.8 percent for the first-year rate it had in March.

Banks like Bank Rakyat Indonesia, CIMB Niaga and Bank Negara Indonesia also had similar rate alterations last month, as compared to March.

“Looking forward, I believe, developers might offers buyers payment schemes to boost sales,” he said, including three- to six-month cash installment plans for the 30 percent down payment for banks.

Transactions of homes purchased at this price range often use home loans, he explained.

In upper-class houses, priced at more than Rp 2 billion, 46 percent of transactions use mortgages.