Thursday, 7 February 2013

Indonesia is … not well.

Sent through by our roving Asian correspondent Suzuki Samurai is this piece on Indonesia that appeared in The Diplomat:

Indonesia has made a remarkable comeback from being Southeast Asia’s economic basket case in 1998 to an emerging market whose economy has been growing annually at more than 5 percent for several years.

Yay!

Yet, Indonesia’s economic growth is neither sustainable nor inclusive.

Damn.

An inconvenient fact is that Indonesia’s economic growth is mainly driven by a commodity boom fuelled by China’s appetite for raw materials and global demand for biofuels [which bubble is soon to burst] …
    The other main driver of Indonesia’s economic growth is domestic consumption. This is mostly driven by easy access to credit cards.

Sounds a little too much like a rather large island just the other side of the Tasman, doesn’t it.

1 comment:

the drunken watchman said...

aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves?

last I heard it was Japan and China going to pop their bubbles,now we have moved onto Indonesia and Australia?

(oops, I forgot about Spain and the Euro :)