Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian government wants to provide telephone links to all villages in the sprawling nation by the end of 2008, Communications Minister Muhammad Nuh said Tuesday. A total of some 38,000 villages -- more than half of Indonesia's 70,000 -- were still without phone links, the minister was quoted by AFP as telling a lunch with foreign reporters. "We start with 18,000 (villages) for 2007 and the rest, 20,000, in 2008," he said.

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The high level of dependency on imported telecommunication and informatics equipment is because local products have not yet met the required quality. Head of the Indonesian Cellular Telephone Association, Johnny Swandi Sjam, said that domestic industry can only provide tower and several software applications. Now tower making procurement is even regarded as more expensive.

MEDAN, Indonesia - Indonesia expects palm oil output to grow sharply in the next two years but stricter forest protection may then slow expansion, a senior industry official said on Monday. Indonesia is set to take over from Malaysia as the world's top palm oil producer this year because of rapid expansion in the last five years. "We expect to see output grow by 8 to 9 percent until 2009.

Medan, N Sumatra (ANTARA News) - Transactions made at the Real Estate Indonesia (REI) Expo which ran for six days here reached a total value of Rp9 billion and transactions expected to be concluded after the event Rp20 billion, a spokesperson said. The transactions concerned units in 75 property projects offered by 20 developers from Medan, Batam and Jakarta and 16 auxiliary property companies which also took part in the exhibition, REI Expo committee chairman Fajri said here Monday.