Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta Here's a statistic that might surprise anyone who has spent more than five minutes in Jakarta's malls: Only a quarter of Indonesia's 220 million people have a cellular phone or access to a cell phone service. In other words, there's some serious potential out there. The country is likely to remain a lucrative market for any cell phone industry player for some time to come. One relatively new player is Mobile-8 Telecom.

State gas company PT PGN has blamed a six-month delay in the opening of a key US$1.1 billion pipeline -- which sent its shares tumbling by 23 percent last week -- on management and technical problems. The pipeline will span a total of 1,106 kilometers and link South Sumatra and West Java, and have the capacity to transport 1,000 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) of gas. It was originally scheduled to open in December.

Bank Indonesia says foreign nationals will only be allowed to work as top-level executives at foreign-owned banks in the country. The central bank's deputy governor for banking affairs, Muliaman D Hadad, also said they hoped to accelerate the "transfer of knowledge" at these banks. Bank Indonesia is currently working to finalize a draft regulation on these issues.