April Post Election Visit
Commentary by Wayne Forrest I spent 9 days in Indonesia recently, April 20-30, and had very productive meetings in Jakarta and Banda Aceh. The run up to the recent Presidential Election was much hyped [...]
Resilient Indonesia/Financial Pulse 2019
Kancil Indonesia is like the folktale character Mouse Deer (Kancil) Kancil, a small “mouse” deer that despite his size outwits crocodiles, tigers, elephants, using his cunning and resourcefulness to survive in a [...]
Limits of Hard Infrastructure
The huge promise of the Jokowi Administration’s infrastructure efforts has not yet resulted in lower logistics costs. The rosy future predicted in glossy reports of McKinsey, Citibank, World Bank and others depends in large [...]
Time For Straighter Talk
Since January 1 the rupiah has strengthened from 15,000 to 14,000, mostly on the heels of announcements from the Fed that it would not be raising the prime rate imminently. With a yawning current account [...]
2018: A Year of Red Ink
Looking back at 2018 one sees a year many of us might otherwise want to forget; it was a true test of Indonesia’s capacity for resilience. Amid a string of natural and human disasters; [...]
Wisdom of Yogyakarta
Commentary by Wayne Forrest I recently spent 5 days in NY and Connecticut with the man who would be President of Indonesia. Its not hard to see why Sultan of Yogyakarta examines a puppet at [...]