Quoting: biznews A friend of mine from overseas was in Jakarta on a visit. He took a taxi - after a seriously inconvenient and irritating bargaining process with taxi drivers - only to be cheated out of hundreds of thousands of rupiah. He was forced to pay Rp 800,000 for a distance that would normally cost Rp 100,000. This is a very simple - yet very telling - example of corruption in Indonesia. He paid how much? That's not corruption, that's idiot tax.

JAKARTA -- Bank Indonesia kept its benchmark overnight rate unchanged at 6.5% during a rate review Thursday, and said the near-term outlook for Southeast Asia's largest economy is robust while inflation remains well contained. The central bank's rate decision and economic forecast underscore the fast-improving macroeconomic backdrop in Indonesia and abroad, and should allow domestic financial assets to continue gaining, analysts said.

Indonesia the archipelago of 17000 islands owes its modern existence to integration of access of electricity and the increasing gap in the country's end-user energy market is threatening to set the country in energy poverty in less than 25 years. The government of Indonesia recognizes this and are doing a great deal in ensuring that 95% of its nation is warranted electricity access by 2035.

Palm oil companies in the country said Thursday that the export regulation on crude palm oil (CPO) export was too tight and often influenced CPO prices. "We have to pay 25 percent in tax for exporting CPO. The tax has raised the price of CPO," Bakrie Sumatera Plantation President Director Ambono Janurianto told participants at the Indonesia Palm Oil Conference in Bali on Thursday. The exporters have to pay between 0.5 percent and 25 percent for tax.

The World Bank’s last quarterly report on Indonesia issued two months ago was entitled Clearing Skies. True, with an estimated economic growth of 4.3 percent, the highest in Asia after China and India, and the peaceful parliamentary and presidential elections in April and July that reinstalled President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for the second term, the economy should be poised for a sturdy take off next year to a growth of as high as 5.5 percent.

The National Standardization Agency (BSN) has remained unable to promote standardization as a non-tariff barrier to protect the local industry from the global market’s volatility, legislators said Thursday. The House of Representatives’ Commission VI on trade and industry member Nurdin Tampubolon told BSN, as the sole authority to issue national standard (SNI) of products, to set a certain standard for imported goods that flood the market.

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - MS Hidayat, chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) has called on the organization`s members to prepare themselves for the implementation of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) next month. "We must be alert to the possible impact of the implementation of the FTA," Hidayat said when opening a Kadin national leadership conference here on Thursday.

Denpasar, Bali (ANTARA News) - Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Darwin Zahedy Saleh said Indonesia had geothermal energy resources of up to 28,000 megawatt with a potential power generating capacity of 13,440 MW.