President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo gets ready to inspect the progress of the trans-Papua road project by motorbike in Wamena on May 10. (Courtesy/State Palace)

Jokowi inspects progress of trans-Papua road project

The Jakarta Post

Asia News Network

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his entourage visited Wamena, Papua, on the last day of his working visit to the area on Wednesday, to inspect the progress of the trans-Papua road project.

Jokowi inspected the development of the Wamena-Mamugu 1 section road by motorbike. The inspected road is part of the 4,300-km project.

“Imagine how difficult it was for the builders [of the road],” he told reporters after the inspection on Wednesday.

Jokowi said the Indonesia Military (TNI) was cooperating with the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry to finish the project by 2019.

“In the beginning [the project] was carried out by the TNI, before the ministry joined in to get it done faster,” said Jokowi.

Jokowi was accompanied by TNI commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo, Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono and Army chief of staff Gen. Mulyono during the inspection.

Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono has earlier said the development of the 4,300-kilometer trans-Papua road project in Papua and West Papua provinces is expected to be completed next year,.

“The construction has seen significant progress,” Basuki said in Jakarta, as reported by tempo.co on Tuesday.

He said 3,850 km of the total 4,300-km road had been constructed, while the remaining section would be developed this year and next year.

Similarly, the ministry had also constructed 884 km of a 1,086-km road project near the border between Papua and Papua New Guinea, he said.

When the construction of the trans-Papua road is finished, it will accelerate development in the provinces because many areas that used to be isolated will be connected to economic centers.

Citing an example, he said the trans-Papua road section from Mamugu-Kenyam-Haberba-Wamena would result in a significant decline in prices of basic commodities and construction materials, particularly cement.

“People have started to benefit from the construction of the trans-Papua road and border road. People who in the past had to travel on foot can use vehicles,” he added.

The government has allocated Rp 7.61 trillion (US$570.75 million) for the construction of infrastructure in the provinces, as well as a Rp 2.18 trillion special allocation fund.

Apart from roads, the ministry is also developing housing and clean water projects.

In his note, Prayut said he wished to extend his warmest congratulations to Macron on being elected as the president of France.

“Your substantial victory and progressive direction are reflective of how the French people have placed their confidence in you to lead the country forward,” Prayut said.

Thailand and France have enjoyed close and friendly relations for 161 years, Prayut said, adding: “Our longstanding ties have evolved into a Strategic Partnership based on common interests in a number of important areas.”

Prayut was confident that relations between Thailand and France would become stronger under Macron’s leadership. “I look forward to working closely with you to reinforce our mutual beneficial ties for the prosperity of our two countries and peoples,” he said.

Duterte has in his 10 months in office sought to weaken ties with the United States, the Philippines’ mutual defence treaty partner and former colonial ruler that he has said is diminishing as a global superpower.

The 12-day “Balikatan” war games that opened on Monday will involve fewer than half the number of soldiers than in 2015, when they were steered by Duterte’s pro-American predecessor, Benigno Aquino.

There will also be no focus on boosting the Philippines’ maritime defence capabilities, which in previous years had been widely seen as a show of strength against Beijing over competing claims in the South China Sea.

Duterte has reversed Aquino’s policy of challenging China forcefully on the territorial row, electing to instead pursue closer economic, political and military relations with Beijing.

While on a trip to Beijing last year Duterte, a self-described socialist, announced that he was in the “ideological flow” of China’s communist rulers.

Much of Duterte’s criticism appeared to have been triggered by American criticism of his drug war, which has claimed thousands of lives and been condemned by rights groups as a possible crime against humanity.

Focus on China, Russia

Duterte responded to criticism from then-US president Barack Obama by describing him using an offensive epithet and threatening to sever defence relations completely between the two nations.

Bilateral ties have warmed under Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, but Duterte has continued to signal his preference for building stronger relations with China and Russia.

Duterte is due to next week visit China for a second time as leader, and is also expected to this month travel to Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Duterte last week said he may be too busy to accept an invitation by Trump to visit Washington, even though no date had been proposed for the trip.

Previous editions of the Balikatan exercises involved large-scale joint operations in or near the South China Sea, which China claims nearly in its entirety.

This year the exercises will focus only on counter-terrorism and disaster relief, the heads of the Philippine and US delegations said at the opening ceremony at the national military headquarters in Manila.

They will involve 2,600 American soldiers and 2,800 Filipino troops, according to both sides.

This is down from 12,000 in the 2015 edition of Balikatan, which means shoulder-to-shoulder.

The American co-director of this year’s Balikatan, Lieutenant General Lawrence Nicholson, said the US military hoped the exercises would grow again in future editions.

“If you look back on 33 years of Balikatan, they are all different. There are any number of ways it can change. It can be bigger, it can be smaller. We hope it gets bigger,” Nicholson told reporters.

One of the major exercises this year will simulate a response to a major storm hitting the eastern Philippines, then cutting across heavily populated areas of the country including Manila.

The Philippines endures about 20 major storms a year that sweep in off the Pacific Ocean, many of them deadly.

American military aid played a crucial role in saving thousands of lives after Super Typhoon Haiyan, then the strongest storm ever recorded to make landfall globally, hit the Philippines in 2013.

More than 7,300 people died then but the death toll would have been far higher if US warships did not quickly reach the devastated areas and deliver supplies.

Markets breathed a sigh of relief as the result effectively eliminates any risk of France leaving the eurozone — a departure advocated by Macron’s eurosceptic challenger Marine Le Pen.

The election briefly boosted the euro above $1.10 briefly before easing back, with analysts saying the Macron win had already been priced in.

Japanese financial markets were closed from Wednesday to Friday for national holidays.

“Since the French presidential election ended with the result that markets had expected, investors’ risk appetite is on the rise,” Hiroaki Hiwata, a market strategist at Toyo Securities, told AFP.

“It is likely to be the same story for European and US markets (later in the day), with expectations for strong corporate earnings also supporting sentiment.”

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 added 1.80 percent, or 349.49 points, to 19,795.19 by the break, on track for its best finish since December 2015.

The broader Topix index of all first-section shares climbed 1.86 percent, or 28.81 points, to 1,579.11.

Almost definitive election results showed Macron winning 65.82 percent of the vote in the first ever election he has contested, far ahead of Le Pen at 34.18 percent.

“There’s a certain amount of relief in the market,” Mitsuo Shimizu, deputy general manager at Tokyo-based Japan Asia Securities, told Bloomberg News.

The dollar dipped to 112.77 yen from 112.80 yen in New York Friday.

A weaker yen is positive for Japanese shares as it inflates the value of profits that firms earn overseas.

Wall Street stock rallied to fresh records Friday as the solid US jobs report further strengthened the odds that the Federal Reserve will stick to a planned course of two more interest rate hikes in 2017.

Japanese firms with a strong presence in Europe were among the key gainers with Sony jumping 3.03 percent to 3,970 yen and Hitachi adding 2.27 percent to end the morning at 637.7 yen.

Automaker Mazda rose 1.93 percent to 1,634 yen and Nintendo tacked on 2.29 percent to 29,005 yen.

WeChat, known as Weixin in China, is the world’s most popular messaging service, with 889 million global users by the end of 2016.

As well as messaging, it also offers payment, ride-hailing and other services, and Tencent has ambitions to spread the app beyond China.

It is unclear how many users WeChat has in Russia.

“We’re experiencing a block and we’re deeply sorry,” a Tencent official said on a company microblog.

“Russian regulations say online service providers have to register with the government but WeChat doesn’t have the same understanding (of the rules),” the official added.

A spokesman for Russia’s telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor said the messaging service “did not provide its contact information for the register of information distribution organizations.”

“We are sending letters to iTunes and Google Play to block the app. We await a reaction. If it does not follow, access to the messenger will be limited through telecom providers,” Vadim Ampelonsky told state-run RIA Novosti Friday.

Read also: Snapchat to host original TV shows

Earlier in the week, Roskomnadzor placed Blackberry Messenger and Line on its list of banned services for the same reasons, RIA reported.

A law passed in 2014 requires foreign messaging services, search engines and social networking sites to store the personal data of Russian users inside Russia.

Sites that breach the law are added to a blacklist and internet providers are obliged to block access.

The law prompted criticism from internet companies but entered into force in September 2015, with professional networking site LinkedIn blocked after it was found to have broken the law.

China also has strict internet regulations.

Communist authorities censor online content they deem politically sensitive, while blocking some Western websites and the services of internet giants including Facebook, Twitter and Google with a vast control network dubbed the Great Firewall of China.

Tencent became China’s most valuable firm in September, beating state-owned telecom behemoth China Mobile and nearly reaching half of Apple’s valuation.//AFP

The 1997 Asian financial crisis led to closer economic ties that will put the region in good stead to weather shocks and a rise in protectionism, a new report has said.

The crisis was a “landmark event” for the Asean Plus Three economies – comprising the 10 Asean nations and China, Japan and South Korea – that spurred intra-regional integration in trade and investment and led to systems to ease the impact of global threats.

One example is the Singapore- based Asean+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (Amro), which launched yesterday’s economic outlook report on the sidelines of the four-day 50th Asian Development Bank (ADB) board of governors’ meeting in Yokohama.

Amro is seen as the Asian version of the International Monetary Fund and has been described by Singapore Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat as an “early warning mechanism” that can provide policy recommendations to avert crises.

It also runs the Chiang Mai Initiative, a safety net that started as a series of bilateral deals before it became a US$240 billion (S$336 billion) multilateral pact. It serves as a joint reserve that provides loans for countries in financial trouble.

At a separate panel yesterday, Japanese State Minister of Finance Minoru Kihara noted that the Asian financial crisis had “enhanced solidarity in Asia and brought resilience to its financial markets”.

A resolve towards multilateral ties helped ease the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis and the European Union debt crisis on Asia, he said. To ride out economic uncertainties, financial cooperation – through remaining open to free trade, foreign direct investment and capital flows – will be key.

Amro chief economist Hoe Ee Khor said Asia has benefited from globalisation and can take the lead to “integrate and be a voice for open free trade systems” via the Asean Economic Community of 2015, which envisions Asean as a single market, and the 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership free trade pact.

He called on policymakers to ensure robust social safety nets to mitigate the impact of the so-called fourth Industrial Revolution of artificial intelligence, robotics and the Internet of Things that is expected to create job redundancy.

Separately, ADB president Takehiko Nakao told a news conference that the region should continue its efforts to lower trade barriers.

The Japan-led ADB and China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) are not competitors, he said, and must work together to address the massive infrastructure needs in the region.

The ADB estimates a US$26 trillion investment is required to meet Asia’s infrastructure demands from last year to 2030.

Since the AIIB’s launch in 2015, the two lenders have co-financed three infrastructure projects in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Georgia.