Indonesia

Economy:
GDP (purchasing power parity): $969.2 billion
GDP – per capita (PPP): $4,000
Population: 242,968,342

Language: Bahasa
Indonesia (official, modified form of Malay), English, Dutch, local dialects (the most widely spoken of which is Javanese)

Internet Penetration
1.66 million domain names registered
30 million users online

Paid Search Engines in Indonesia:
Google (64.9% market share)
Yahoo (18.8% market share)
Microsoft (9.4 % market share)
Ask (3.9% market share)
AOL (3.0% market share)

About Indonesia:
Indonesia is a country of diverse islands and cultures, with over 700 living languages spoken across the country.
It was a colony of the Netherlands from the early 17th Century, until Japan took over the country at the onset of the World War II in 1942.

Soon after Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces, the Dutch tried to reassert their claim over the territory, but nationalist leader Suharto had already declared Indonesian independence and was appointed as the first President.
An armed and diplomatic struggle ensued between the Dutch and new Indonesian leaders until international pressure forced Indonesia’s former colonial masters to withdraw and recognize Indonesia’s independence.

Indonesia is a largely agricultural country, producing farm products, including tropical fruits, beef, and poultry. However, it has also a large base of industries that include processed foods, wood products, crude oil and natural gas.
With a GDP of $969.2 billion, Indonesia is a member of the G-20, a group of systemically important industrialized and developing economies that periodically meet to discuss key issues in the global economy.

It is the largest economy in Southeast Asia and the 16th largest in the world. As the world’s 4th most populous country, coupled with the distinction as the country with the highest number of Muslim population, Indonesia’s importance in global affairs cannot be taken too lightly.

Under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s watch, Indonesia introduced significant reforms that enable the country to control its debt-to-GDP ratio largely through increasingly robust GDP growth and sound fiscal management.
Since the start of his presidency in 2004, Yudhoyono managed to sustain an average growth rate of 5.4% and was hardly affected by the global financial crisis. With his reelection in 2009, the former military general is expected to sustain Indonesia record growth, outshine its regional neighbors, and join China and India as the only G-20 members recording significant growth during the global crisis.

While Indonesia has made significant inroads in improving its economy, it still has to struggle with poverty, double digit unemployment rate, insufficient road network, bureaucratic corruption, unequal resource distribution among its regions, and widening gap between rich and poor.

It also needs to address the problem of environmental degradation in the light of natural calamities and disasters that have been periodically destroying properties and claiming thousands of lives in recent years, and the thorn of terrorism perpetuated by Muslim extremists.

Not an easy job for anyone, but Yudhoyono and other leaders have displayed a tremendous “can do” attitude that Indonesia needs to sustain its economic expansion.