VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

A full Chinese invasion of Taiwan with troops landed and ports and airports seized would be very difficult to achieve due to problems China would have in landing and supplying troops, Taiwan's Defence Ministry said in its latest threat assessment.

Tensions between Taipei and Beijing, which claims the democratically-ruled island as its own territory, have risen in the past two years as China steps up military activities near Taiwan to pressure it to accept Chinese rule.

In a report to lawmakers, Taiwan's Defence Ministry said China's transport capacity was at present limited, it would not be able to land all its forces in one go, and would have to rely on "non-standard" roll-on, roll-off ships that would need to use port facilities and transport aircraft that would need airports.

"However, the nation's military strongly defends ports and airports, and they will not be easy to occupy in a short time. Landing operations will face extremely high risks," the ministry said in its report, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters.

China's logistics face challenges too, as any landing forces would need to be resupplied with weapons, food and medicines across the Taiwan Strait that separates the two, it added.

"The nation's military has the advantage of the Taiwan Strait being a natural moat and can use joint intercept operations, cutting off the Communist military's supplies, severely reducing the combat effectiveness and endurance of the landing forces."

China would also need to keep some of its forces in reserve to prevent any foreign forces joining in to help Taiwan and to keep close watch on other fractious areas of China's border, like with India and in the South China Sea, the ministry said.

"U.S. and Japanese military bases are close to Taiwan, and any Chinese Communist attack would necessarily be closely monitored, plus it would need to reserve forces to prevent foreign military intervention," it added.

"It is difficult to concentrate all its efforts on fighting with Taiwan."

Experts say though that China has other means at its disposal to bring Taiwan to its knees short of a full out invasion, including a blockade or targeted missile attacks.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen is overseeing a military modernisation programme to make the island harder to attack, making the military more mobile and with precision weapons like longer-range missiles to take out an attacking force.

The government is planning an extra T$240 billion ($8.66 billion) over the next five years in military spending to go mostly toward naval weapons, including missiles and warships. (Reuters)

Supply chain management issue is a primary challenge for the development of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises' (MSMEs) product markets, Minister of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Teten Masduki has said.

"Despite the fact that Indonesia has various products, the production capacity of its entrepreneurs, however, remains small," he said in a written statement here on Sunday.

At the Indonesian Bazaar Hits event in Bogor, West Java, he highlighted that there is a large demand for brown sugar from Europe and North America.

However, MSMEs entrepreneurs, especially the ones at the micro and small level, continued to receive aggregation to fulfill this demand.

Hence, Masduki welcomed BogorHitz Commerce that acts as a platform for quality MSMEs products from Bogor that are expected to be able to compete at the international level.

"I always encourage regional heads to pick and choose one or several quality products unique to their regions for us to develop their qualities and marketing," he affirmed.

The minister underlined the importance of MSMEs' digital transformation as it is projected that Indonesia's digital economic strength will grow by eight-folds in 2030 or reaching Rp4.531 trillion.

With this potential, his ministry continued to accelerate MSMEs transition into the digital ecosystem. Currently, around 24.9 percent, or 16.4 million MSMEs, have underwent this digital transition.

On the occasion, Bogor's Mayor Bima Arya said that MSMEs products should have unique touches in order to attract the global market.

This could be done by adding a modern nuance while also promoting their ethnic or local characteristics.

The Bogor municipality is planning to build a pedestrian area to be surrounded by hotels, cafes and restaurants offering culinary unique to Bogor, along Penjajaran street next year.

"I call this move as cosmopolitan nationalism," Arya said. (Antaranews)

Vice President Ma'ruf Amin has called on all economic and Islamic finance players to expedite growth of the Islamic financial technology industry in Indonesia.

"The growth of sharia fintech needs to be pushed through reinforcement of the economic and sharia finance ecosystem," Amin said on a video broadcast on the Indonesian Vice President's official YouTube account on Monday.

Amin cited data from the Financial Services Authority that indicated the number of sharia fintech service providers in Indonesia as of October 2021 to reach only seven, with assets totaling some Rp74 billion.

"This figure is still very far from conventional fintech, which dominates with a total of 97 units and total assets of Rp4.2 trillion," he pointed out.

The large Muslim population in Indonesia could serve as an opportunity to improve the sharia fintech industry, including providing sharia social fund distribution services, he reminded.

Amin also deemed the efforts to boost the number of sharia fintech services as one of the means to avoid illegal financial services that harm the public.

"The Investment Alert Task Force has banned as many as 3,631 illegal online loan lenders. This needs our collective attention, as it will degrade public trust in legal fintech," he elaborated.

The vice president requested all financial technology industry players to increase innovation in the development of business models and financial technology solutions.

Fintech services must be inclusive and provide services that could proffer a sense of comfort and safety to the people in conducting economic activities in the fintech industry, he stated.

"Fintech must be inclusive, not exclusive. Reach the wider community's financial ecosystem, including those that are still economically disadvantaged, such as MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) and cooperatives," Amin concluded. (Antaranews)

The Health Ministry will prioritize the use of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine solely for children in the age bracket of six to 11 years from January 2022.

"We encourage the use of the Sinovac vaccine for children aged 6-11 years. We prioritize those children," Ministry of Health's COVID-19 Vaccination Spokesperson, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, stated in Jakarta on Monday.

Tarmizi explained that currently, Sinovac vaccine was the sole COVID-19 vaccine to have obtained an emergency-use permit from the Food and Drug Supervisory Agency (BPOM) for COVID-19 vaccination for children in the age group of six to 11 years.

Acting Director-General of Disease Prevention and Control of Health Ministry Maxi Rein Rondonuwu affirmed that vaccines apart from Sinovac would be prioritized for people other than the age group of 6 to 11 years.

"Starting from next year, Sinovac vaccine is only for children in the age group of six to 11 years old. Other vaccines available in Indonesia are prioritized for other targets," Rondonuwu stated during a virtual press conference on December 12.

He also noted that COVID-19 vaccination for children aged six to 11 years would start on December 14, with the target number of vaccinations reaching 26 million more children based on the 2020 population census data.

"We will vaccinate all children aged 6 to 11 years. Based on the data, there are 26.8 million in total," Rondonuwu added.

The implementation of child vaccination aligns with the president's instruction to immediately conduct vaccinations for children in the age group of six to 11 years. In addition, the Indonesian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (ITAGI) has issued recommendations for COVID-19 vaccination for children aged 6 to 11 years, he remarked.

"We are striving to drive child vaccinations because we want to expedite the process for all Indonesians and attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19 transmission," he emphasized.

Currently, based on the Health Ministry's data on Monday, over 146 million people had received their first dose of vaccination and more than 103 million of them had been fully vaccinated with various types of vaccine brands, such as Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Pfizer, and Moderna.  (Antaranews)