“Cerita Liburan dengan Teman Seperjalanan"

           Mempunyai teman baru itu memang menyenangkan, apalagi ketika dipertemukan saat kita sedang menghabiskan waktu untuk memanjakan otak yang suntuk akan tugas kuliah dan masalah lainnya So.. kebanyakan orang pasti merasakan ya guys. Haha

Ok kembali ke topik awal, gue disini akan menceritakan perjalanan liburan yang gak gue sangka sebelumnya. Awalnya, gue hanya ingin bersilahturahmi sama Om gue yang keadaannya lagi kurang sehat,  sekaligus liburan sih hehe.. Tempatnya itu di Banten Pandeglang, dimana suasananya yang sejuk dan hamparan sawah hijau disekeliling kawasan disana menjadi salah satu alternatif buat gue untuk berlibur. Setiba disana ternyata Adik sepupu gue yang bernama Ayustin mengajak gue hiking ke salah satu Gunung yang terdekat di tempat Om gue tinggal.

Hmm pertamanya gue bingung karena jika gue meng-iya-kan, itu akan jadi kali pertama gue untuk mendaki. Bukan karena takut atau apa. Hai gengs! “Siapa sih yang gak ingin melihat salah satu ciptaan Tuhan yang luar biasa itu??” haha tapi alasannya adalah izin. Yaps, izin dari orang tua tentunya, terutama dari Ibu gue yang tersayang. Karena Ibu gue termasuk salah satu Ibu yang posesifnya luar biasa haha. Tapi pada akhirnya gue pun tetep berangkat juga setelah satu hari setiba di kediaman Om gue dengan mengandalkan restu dari Om dan Tante gue, yaitu tepatnya pada hari Minggu tanggal 21 Februari 2016  gue dan Adik gue ke Gunung Pulosari.

Rencana awalnya itu kita berangkat bertiga. Gue, Ayus, dan Om gue. Tapi berhubung Om gue lagi kurang sehat, akhirnya kita berangkat cuma berdua. Cuma gue dan Ayus. Haha agak nekat juga sih sebenernya, dan tadinya keputusan itu juga ditentang sama Tante gue dikarenakan kita perempuan dan cuma berdua, tapi akhirnya diizinin ketika kita melakukan rayuan maut wkwkw. Maksudnya rayuan yang cenderung maksa.

Dan sesampai di kawasan Pulosari, ternyataaa eng ing eng!!! Kita bertemu dengan teman seperjalanan yang mengajak kita untuk bergabung bersama mereka. Pertamanya agak ragu dan canggung, ya dikarenakan belum kenal (yaiyalah) dan tentunya takut merepotkan. Tapi pada endingnya kita memutuskan untuk bergabung, alasannya sih karna ini perjalanan perdana mendaki dan ada rasa takut untuk kesasar walaupun kemungkinannya kecil (jalanannya setapak) haha.

Oh iya, gue kenalin mereka dulu yaa..Mereka itu 5 bersahabat yang umurnya ga jauh beda dari gue, mereka sempat menuntut ilmu dibangku sekolah yang sama. Tapi sekarang masing-masing dari mereka kuliah di Universitas yang berbeda. Mereka itu antara lain, Riva, Odi, Rido, Rizky dan Anca. Mereka itu unik, masing-masing dari mereka mempunyai karakter yang berbeda tetapi saling melengkapi satu dengan lainnya. Saat di perjalanan mendaki, sikap keramahan penduduk dan pendaki lainnya sangat kental dan membuat semangat tersendiri.Akan tetapi, belum ada setengah perjalanan untuk sampai di puncak Gunung tapi kaki gue udah menuntut minta rehat dibebatuan. Maklum yaaa ini perdana loh hehe, mata gue sewaktu disana itu ketika ngeliat batu besar seperti bukan batu. Tapi bagaikan singgahsana kerajaan dimana setiap orang yang menduduki batu itu terasa begitu nyaman (lebay). Gue dan Ayus sempat berpisah sebentar dengan mereka berlima dikarenakan gue yang kebanyakan duduk setiap liat batu -____-. Tapi ngga lama kemudian kita bertemu lagi dikawah dan membangun tenda-tendaan wkwkw. Dan pada saat itu hujan lebat tiba-tiba mengguyur bumi (bahsamu nak). Selagi menunggu hujan reda, kita disana ngemil-ngemil cantik sambil ngobrol-ngobrol ganteng satu sama lain. Walaupun baru kenal dalam hitungan menit, tapi momen kekeluargaan didapat pada saat itu, yang mereka tunjukan dari keramahan dan kepedulian yang luar biasa. Canda gurau yang mencairkan suasana, terselip curhatan-curhatan mereka soal kehidupan itu menjadi pelengkap liburan gue yang berkesan. Pokoknya serunya itu sampe tumpeh-tumpeeeeh hahaha.

Hujan pun berhenti, tidak lupa untuk sesi foto-foto yang sudah menjadi budaya orang-orang ketika liburan. Setelah itu kita bergegas untuk turun Gunung. Dengan kehati-hatian saat melangkah dikarenakan trek yang dilalui sangat licin akibat hujan.

Sesampainya dibawah kami berpisah untuk berpulang kerumah masing-masing. Dengan senyuman dan terselip harapan untuk bertemu kembali di momen liburan berikutnya.

Terimakasih kawan, karena kalian menunjukan bahwa saudara tidak harus sedarah. #jempol

See you next trip!!! SALAM INDONESIA!

Tugas - 1 Softskill B.inggris Bisnis 2 tentang Perekonomian Indonesia

To secure the growth it needs, Indonesia must resist its protectionist urges

Feb 27th 2016 | From the print edition

AS YOU DRIVE (or more likely, sit and stew in traffic) in any of Indonesia’s big cities, you may see dozens of cyclists in green helmets and jackets zooming past your car windows. They are clad in the uniform of Go-Jek, an Indonesian e-commerce firm. Its name is a play on ojek, the Indonesian word for the country’s omnipresent motorcycle taxis. Its app, launched in January, lets users call a driver for a ride or a delivery. Since then the company has seen, in the words of its young founder, Nadiem Makarim, “crazy growth”.

Indonesia is in the midst of an e-commerce startup boom, and no wonder. It is the world’s fourth-largest mobile-phone market, with more SIM cards in use than there are people. Two-fifths of its 255m population—half of whom are under 30—have a smartphone. But the very success of this boom hints at a broader failure. The e-commerce sector is vibrant in large part because the government has not yet worked out how to regulate it. Indonesia’s attitude towards business has in general been hostile. Its labour laws are rigid. To start a business takes an average of 47 days, compared with four in Malaysia and 2.5 in Singapore.

During the long global boom in commodities, firms were obliged to tolerate such red tape, but that no longer holds. Indonesia exports crude oil, natural gas, palm oil, rubber, gold and tin, and is especially rich in coal. Its main commodity exports tripled in value between 2000 and 2010, says Rodrigo Chaves, the World Bank’s country director for Indonesia. As exports boomed, so did the economy. But the value of commodity exports has fallen by more than half from their peak. Bambang Brodjonegoro, Indonesia’s finance minister, laments that coal—which accounts for 11% of exports—now fetches just $50 per tonne, against $150 in 2011.

In the decade to 2014 GDP grew by an annual average of 6%, but the commodity bust has slowed the economy. Last year it grew by just 4.8%, the slowest rate since 2009. This year is unlikely to be much better: the 2016 budget sets a GDP growth target of 5.3%. But compared with many other commodity exporters Indonesia is getting off lightly.

The value of the rupiah, Indonesia’s currency, against the dollar has fallen by a hefty 30% since mid-2013, but has been stable recently, and other emerging-market currencies have fallen even more steeply over that period. Despite the weak exchange rate, inflation has mostly remained within the central bank’s target range of 3-5%. The main impact of the rupiah’s fall has been to curb imports, helping limit Indonesia’s current-account deficit to around 2% of GDP last year in the face of weaker export earnings. A prudent fiscal policy during the boom years has allowed for a modest fiscal expansion to offset the effects of weak exports and investment. Public debt is just 26% of GDP.

The trouble is that GDP growth of around 5% is far below the 8% which the World Bank says Indonesia requires to create jobs for the 2.5m people entering the workforce each year. Indonesia must reform its economy to capitalise on the dividend from a young and growing workforce. As Mr Chaves cautions, “no country became rich after it became old.”

Indonesia will never function as seamlessly as Singapore; it is too big, diverse and fractious. But the size of its domestic market gives it an advantage over smaller countries in attracting foreign investment. Encouragingly, it has a track record of liberalising its policies in troubled times. When its “command socialism” collapsed in the 1960s, it opened resource sectors to foreign investment; when oil prices fell in the 1980s, it developed its capital markets and relaxed restrictions on foreign ownership; and after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 it abolished many import controls and tariffs.

To his credit, Jokowi realises that Indonesia cannot lift its long-term growth rate if the economy remains reliant on extractive industries; it needs a broader range of manufacturing and service industries. If new enterprise is to flourish, Indonesia must support local entrepreneurship and woo, rather than merely tolerate, foreign business.

Last April the president told an audience at a World Economic Forum conference in Jakarta that investing in Indonesia would bring “incredible profits”. On his maiden trip to Washington, DC, last October he brought along an entourage of entrepreneurs and businesspeople, and said he was interested in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a free-trade agreement that would commit his country to significant economic liberalisation.

Tom Lembong, who took over as trade minister last August, has promised a more liberal approach to economic policy: a regulator’s job, he says, is to “ensure order and get out of the way”, and protection “is for children, the elderly and the vulnerable…not for adults, and certainly not for companies”. Such pronouncements mark a welcome shift. Hans Vriens, who runs a consultancy focusing on South-East Asian businesses, says Indonesian policymakers “have generally viewed foreign investment as a zero-sum game—if the foreigners have it, something is wrong and we have to take it back—instead of thinking, as Singapore does, about how we can thrive together. As a result, many investors have given Indonesia a miss, despite its size.”

Go-Jek, an Indonesian e-commerce firm offering rides and deliveries, has seen “crazy growth”

Jokowi has done his bit to improve the business climate. At the beginning of last year he launched a one-stop service for licensing businesses, which cuts out the need to spend days dashing from one ministry to another. And since last September he has unveiled a series of measures to help business, including easing some onerous regulations, cutting industrial energy tariffs, streamlining licensing procedures for firms on industrial estates and providing tax incentives to invest in special economic zones. Mr Bambang says that under Jokowi the average number of days needed to open a power plant has declined from 900 to 200 (“still short of international standards”, he concedes). The government recently revised its “negative investment list” of sectors in which foreign ownership is banned or restricted, fully opening up the rubber, film and restaurant sectors, among others.

The government’s spending plans have become more ambitious. Soon after taking office, Jokowi’s administration began rolling out programmes to provide poor Indonesians with government-funded health care, free schooling for 12 years and tertiary education for students accepted into university, as well as a scheme to provide each of Indonesia’s 15.5m poorest households with a cash transfer of 200,000 rupiah ($14.37) a month.

Jokowi says his administration’s health-care programme now covers 88m people, but it already faces a huge shortfall. The government has wisely used savings from cutting fuel subsidies to fund extra capital spending. But the budget deficit still widened to 2.8% of GDP, perilously close to the legal limit of 3%. If public spending is to increase further, the government will need to raise more revenue.

That will not be easy. Most workers and employers pay little or no tax. Mr Bambang estimates that only 27m of Indonesia’s 255m people are registered taxpayers, and in 2014 just 900,000 of them paid what they owed. Much of the fault lies with Indonesia’s Byzantine tax system. The country’s tax inspectors are poorly paid, which makes them easier to bribe. Last year Indonesia collected just 82% of its targeted tax revenue, leaving it with a tax-to-GDP ratio of around 10%, compared with around 13-15% for its ASEAN neighbours and near 40% in western Europe.

Government officials claim that they want to broaden the taxpayer base, but big companies say that they are being squeezed harder by the taxman because they are an easier target. A steady stream of new protectionist rules suggests that other business-bashing instincts still hold sway. A law requiring that by 2017, 30% of all parts for smartphones and tablets sold in Indonesia must be locally made took effect last summer. Last August limits on cattle imports sent beef prices soaring. Revisions to the negative investment list eased restrictions on 30 sectors but boosted them in 19 others. Indonesia’s bureaucracy, complains one foreign businessman, remains “oriented towards control rather than facilitation”.

Where there has been reform, it has not always been well implemented. The one-stop shop for licensing might save a bit of time, but many business folk say that the rules are confusing. Licences are still cumbersome and onerous. Shell, for instance, has around 80 service stations in Indonesia, mostly around Jakarta, for which it needs around 1,500 permits—for safety, water, fire protection, site use and so forth—that must be renewed annually. That takes dozens of people to manage.

Investors often complain that the welcome message from the president has not reached his ministries or local governments, or has arrived too late to prevent confusing about-turns. Go-Jek got a fright in December when the transport ministry declared that “services that demand payment using a private vehicle are not legal.” A day later Jokowi publicly chastised his transport minister and rescinded the ban. Other sectors have seen similar flip-flops, giving the impression of a chaotic administration with no clear policy direction.

Yet this has already begun to change following several cabinet reshuffles, and may improve further as the government settles in. And in one important regard, Indonesia has taken a giant step forward. Whereas past governments failed to invest adequately in infrastructure, particularly outside Java, Jokowi has made the biggest push of his young presidency in this field.

sumber: http://www.economist.com/topics/indonesia

My opinion of the article is as follows...

In this article explained that the Indonesian economy can be shot in the good progress that is starting from a simple thing. From business who have creative ideas, and can be an investment in a country that has a sale value.

Even explained in the article that the Go-Jek, an e-commerce company offering rides and shipping Indonesia, have seen "crazy growth". The purpose of the sentence that I catch is, Go-Jek the origin of simple business, but will affect the country's economic growth.

Then explained also that last April the President told attendees at a conference of the World Economic Forum in Jakarta who invest in Indonesia will bring "tremendous advantage". By investing would impact profits. In addition, by investing course will improve the current value of the rupiah weakened.

It is inevitable that one of the problems in Indonesia because of the weak economy in the rupiah, which also was mentioned in the article. Because we know that the weakening of the rupiah would potentially be bad for the country's economy. Many factors affect the problem. Rupiah including soft currency, ie the currency that is fluctuating or depreciate, because the economy is relatively less established his home country. A special characteristic of currency soft currency is its sensitivity to economic conditions internationally. The financial crisis, speculation in financial markets, and economic instability could lead to the fall of the value of soft currency. In addition to in terms of characteristics, other factors that influence is economic instability. Performance Indonesia economic data, such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product / Gross Domestic Product), inflation, and balance of trade, is also quite affecting Rupiah. Good growth will bolster the value of the rupiah, whereas the trade deficit increased to make Rupiah depreciated. Two sides of the trade balance, import and export, are important here. This is why very important for Indonesia to boost exports and reduce dependence on imported products.

The government must make improvements to the Indonesian economy. The government should increase investment in order to Indonesia no longer need to import to meet domestic consumption needs. The government should give priority to investment in the country to be funded by local investors and reduce reliance on foreign investment. Import restrictions also need to be done in order that the government domestic products can compete with foreign products. Expected government measures could reduce Indonesia's dependence on other countries and demand-exchange foreign country can be decreased so that the stability of the exchange rate and the Indonesian economy can be maintained.

In addition to the role of government, the community is also expected to play an active role in maintaining the stability of the level of the country's economy. For example, by reducing the   consumption of imported products to switch to using domestic products, active in helping to empower UMKM community to increase the volume of domestic production in the country, innovating in making products that can be exported to foreign countries, saving resources to be allocated to the industrial sector in order to products increase productivity, reduce transaction with foreign currency, and much more so. 

In other words, each individual is actually able to reduce the impact of the weakening of the rupiah. In fact, they contribute to improve the welfare of the nation. Basically, the problem of weakening of the rupiah is a common problem (state). So not only the role of government is required to overcome not only the government or the blame. This state can improve from the smallest element, is none other than the citizens themselves. Thus, all elements of the population of both countries as well as partitions are parties interested in maintaining and benefit from the stability of the rupiah. If awareness is already created and entrenched, then Indonesia will be able to compete in all aspects with other countries.