The increase has come about due to more direct flights connecting the two countries.

“Garuda Indonesia has opened a direct flight from Denpasar, Bali, to Shanghai, China.

According to the BPS, Singapore ranked second. The agency recorded 110,261 tourists from Singapore, up 13.15 per cent from February of last year. Malaysia ranked third with 98,331 tourists, followed by 75,331 from Australia and 42,186 from Japan.

The BPS recorded that 888,309 foreigners arrived in Indonesia in February. Of them, 25,129 came for temporary business purposes. This figure shows a 9.1-per-cent increase month-on-month.

In the first two months of 2016, 710,687 foreigners arrived at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, up 14.3 per cent from the same period of last year.

Meanwhile, 317,820 foreigners arrived at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, a 5.6-per-cent decline from the same period of last year.

“This is important progress because foreign tourists boost the economic situation in the country. Tourism has a multiplier effect,” Suryamin said.

– The Jakarta Post

Upper House Speaker Mahn Win Khaing Thein said Htin Kyaw had submitted Pe Zin Htun to be minister of energy and Myo Thein Gyi to be minister of education, replacing Suu Kyi who holds the positions along with those of foreign minister and minister of the president’s office.

The two new ministerial candidates are serving bureaucrats at their respective ministries. Myo Thein Gyi is director general of the education ministry, while Pe Zin Tun is secretariat of the ministry of electric power and energy.

The parliament is set today to adopt the appointments if there were no objections, according to China’s Xinhua news service.

The NLD won a landslide victory in the general election in November but Suu Kyi was prohibited by the military-sponsored constitution from being president because her sons are foreign nationals.

Instead, her close aide Htin Kyaw became president, while Suu Kyi‘s post as foreign minister allows her to sit on the influential National Defence and Security Council with the president, vice presidents and commander of the armed forces.

The position of minister of the president’s office also makes her the cabinet’s chief of staff empowered to work on behalf of the president.

Military-appointed MPs in the Upper House last week slammed the new bill to create a special position for Suu Kyi as state counsellor saying it would be unconstitutional.

If passed into law, the bill could give Suu Kyi a role similar to that of prime minister, allowing her to hold her parliamentary seat as well as her cabinet posts.

“Yet we acknowledge the downside risks emanating from the contraction in agricultural output. Global expectations for rice output are not promising, weighing on agricultural exports,” the ANZ report says.

Early last week, Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s growth forecast for Vietnam’s GDP was robust, with predictions of 6.7 per cent in 2016 and 6.5 per cent in 2017.

Credit Suisse said Vietnam’s growing popularity as a global manufacturing hub was one of the reasons for the growth.

“As labour costs have risen dramatically in China over the last several years, a growing number of manufacturers have moved operations from the Middle Kingdom to Vietnam, or have even decided to set up shop there in the first place,” Credit Suisse said.

Credit Suisse also expects Vietnam’s export growth to moderate slightly from 7.1 per cent in 2015 to 6.9 per cent in 2016 due to a recent slowdown in the United States and China’s declining appetite for imports while total foreign direct investment (FDI) reaches US$13 billion, down from a spectacular $14.5 billion in 2015.

“The manufacturing sector, which accounts for 24 per cent of Viet Nam’s GDP, attracted 57 per cent of the FDI inflows last year. The country stands to gain even more investment from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade agreement among 12 countries,” Credit Suisse said.

However, according to Credit Suisse, the Vietnamese equities market still has its challenges, such as liquidity, a relatively small number of listed firms, and limits on foreign ownership.

The bank’s equities analysts are also more cautious on credit-related assets, including banks and real estate companies. An increase in non-performing loans in the wake of a credit-fuelled property bubble over the last five years has put pressure on banks’ capital ratios. If lending continues at the pace of the last several years, four of the six largest banks will have capital adequacy ratios of less than 10 per cent by the end of 2016.

“I’m just looking for a permanent job that pays over 22 million won (US$19,000) a year, with health insurance, welfare benefits, pension and maternity leave, but it’s so difficult to find. It feels like I’ve lost my dream and my future,” she said.

There are 560,000 jobless young people like her in South Korea, aged between 15 and 29, based on figures released by Statistics Korea last month.

The news should soothe the nerves of young people desperate for work. Many, like Hwang, have resorted to finding temporary or part-time work.

Others, like Yu Hyo Jin, 26, are going back to school. A literature graduate, she has been unable to find a permanent job since graduating two years ago and is attending English classes to improve her chances of being hired as a teacher.

“We hope the government will do more to help us. So far, they have promised a lot, but have little results to show,” said Yu.

Their woes can be blamed on an unresponsive education system that has not kept up with what the job market needs. College programmes are concentrated in the humanities and social sciences, but the country has been pushing to grow its information technology and financial technology sectors.

Competition is also stiff. A national exam for those aspiring to be civil servants drew more than 222,000 applications in mid-February for just 4,120 positions available.

The Korean economy has also been sluggish of late, due to shrinking exports and increased competition from China and other rising economies. But the younger people of South Korea are not entirely free from blame either. Many are picky, believing that there is a lack of “good jobs” deserving of their qualifications.

Universities push out 300,000 graduates a year, which make up the 500,000 young people who enter the job market annually. But official data shows there are only 200,000 permanent positions available each year.

The rest are temporary jobs, some paying the minimum wage of 6,030 won per hour.

The big push for job creation will come from Budget cuts. On the chopping board could be over 190 projects, including infrastructure development.

Dr Choi Kyung Soo, director of human resource development policy at think-tank Korea Development Institute, said the redirected 17 trillion won is a big sum, but it depends on how the money is spent.

Job creation for younger people is a key pledge by President Park Geun Hye, who took office in 2013. Her administration has been spending about 2 trillion won a year on programmes to help employ young people. But the effectiveness of this policy came into question when a report by the Korea Employment Information Service in January showed that only 26.4 per cent of participants managed to find work through these programmes.

Of these, only 15 per cent were hired as regular employees, while others landed temporary or contract positions.

As for Hwang, discouraged by the bleak situation at home, she is now looking overseas. She has registered with a Singapore-based employment agency and hopes to get an interview soon.