Indonesia

With the new administration of President Joko Widodo committed to spending a greater share of the budget on improving the nation’s transport infrastructure and moves under way to provide an enhanced organisational and administrative framework for the sector, there is a new sense of energy with regards to transport in Indonesia. Indeed, with logistics costs equivalent to around...

The aviation industry in South-east Asia suffered an unprecedented number of fatal tragedies in 2014. March saw the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, followed by the shooting down over Ukraine of another Malaysia Airlines plane in July, and then, closer to home, the crash of Indonesia Air Asia’s Flight 8501 in December. These events rocked passenger...

Few visitors to Jakarta will miss its notorious traffic. Indeed, Castrol’s Magnatec Stop-Start Index recently declared the capital the world’s most congested city. A number of factors have contributed to this gridlock over the years. Land use is one: only 6% of Jakarta’s land is dedicated to roads, compared to the roughly 15% needed for a modern city. Growing car ownership is...

Throughout the 2014 campaign for the presidency, Joko Widodo, the eventual winner, stressed the need to bring new blood into a system widely perceived as broken and corrupt. With Widodo now in the driver’s seat, the optimism and hope that often follow a change in leadership is coming to a head during his first year of office. The big questions on everyone’s mind are whether...

The year 2015 is a landmark one for South-east Asia, with the much-anticipated arrival of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) due by the end of the year. This event will have far-reaching consequences across a whole range of economic, political, social and cultural fields, with the impact on the transport sectors of ASEAN member states also likely to be profound. Given...