VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi. ANTARA/HO-Trade Ministry - 

Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi has expressed hope that the Indonesia Marketing Association (IMA) consistently supports small and medium-scale industry and marketing professionals to boost the country's export.

"I offered my appreciation to the IMA for its cooperation to strengthen micro, small and medium-scale enterprises to make them able to compete in export markets. I hope that the IMA can play its active role in improving the quality of marketing professionals to boost Indonesia's export," Lutfi said in a statement here on Sunday.

He congratulated the association on the convening of IMA's national meeting. The biennial meeting has re-elected Suparno Djasmin as IMA's President.

IMA's co-founder Hermawan Kartajaya has lauded the performance of the association's leadership for 2019-2021 term that reflected IMA's values of innovation spirit, entrepreneurship, and humanity-based digital approach.

IMA's national meeting was held virtually on Saturday (Oct 16) and attended by some 1,000 members.

The mandate to lead the association would become a momentum of improving achievements and initiatives during the previous term, IMA's President Suparno Djasmin said, adding that he needs active support from all members.

"In line with our commitment to increasing IMA's role as a platform to develop networking and knowledge, we have been implementing various programs and digital innovation since 2019," he said.

IMA has 47 chapters across Indonesia with more than 873 active members. Some 607 of them have bagged the Certified Professional Marketer (CPM)//ANT

Pilgrims practise social distancing in the Grand Mosque during the annual Haj pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca on Jul 17, 2021. (File photo: Reuters/Saudi Ministry of Media handout) - 

The Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia operated at full capacity on Sunday (Oct 17), with worshippers praying shoulder-to-shoulder for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Workers removed floor markings that guide people to social distance in and around the Grand Mosque, which is built around the Kaaba, the black cubic structure towards which Muslims around the world pray.

"This is in line with the decision to ease precautionary measures and to allow pilgrims and visitors to the Grand Mosque at full capacity," reported the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

Pictures and footage on Sunday morning showed people praying side by side, making straight rows of worshippers that are formations revered in performing Muslim prayers, for the first time since the pandemic took hold last year.

While social distancing measures were lifted, the authorities said that visitors must be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus and must continue to wear masks on mosque grounds.

Also, the Kaaba remained cordoned off and out of reach.

Saudi Arabia announced in August that it will begin accepting vaccinated foreigners wanting to make the umrah pilgrimage.

The umrah can be undertaken at any time and usually draws millions from around the globe, as does the annual Haj, which able-bodied Muslims who have the means must perform at least once in their lifetimes.

In July, only around 60,000 inoculated residents were allowed to take part in a vastly scaled down form of the annual Haj.

The COVID-19 pandemic hugely disrupted both Muslim pilgrimages, which are usually key revenue earners for the kingdom that rake in a combined US$12 billion annually.

Hosting the pilgrimages is a matter of prestige for Saudi rulers, for whom the custodianship of Islam's holiest sites is their most powerful source of political legitimacy.

The once-reclusive kingdom began issuing tourist visas permitting foreign visitors to undertake more than just the pilgrimages for the first time in 2019 as part of an ambitious push to revamp its global image and diversify income.

Between September 2019 and March 2020, it issued 400,000 of them - only for the pandemic to crush that momentum as borders were closed.

But the kingdom is slowly opening up, and has started welcoming vaccinated foreign tourists since Aug 1.

Saudi Arabia also announced that fully inoculated sports fans will from Sunday be allowed to attend events at all stadiums and other sports facilities, reported SPA.

It has also said that masks in most open spaces are no longer mandatory.

Saudi Arabia has registered more than 547,000 COVID-19 cases and 8,760 deaths//CNA

The crowds that came out to see actor Gerard Butler in Sparta brought the last torch relay in Greece to a premature end. This time organisers are avoiding the risk - 

The Olympic flame will once again be lit in an empty stadium on Monday (Oct 18) as it starts its truncated journey to Beijing for the Winter Games in February.

Like the ceremony in March 2020 to light the flame for Tokyo, and like those Games, which were put back a year, Monday's ceremony is a victim of coronavirus restrictions.

"Due to the situation created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lighting Ceremony will be held in strict compliance with local health protocols," the Hellenic Olympic Committee announced in September.

The ceremony is conducted at the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia, site of the ancient Greek games from eighth century BC to the fourth century AD.

Clear skies are forecast for 11.30am local time when the flame is due to be lit by the rays of the sun concentrated in a concave.

Priestess Xanthi Georgiou will light the torch from the flames.

Before the pandemic, the flame had been lit behind closed doors once, in 1984, when Greek organisers wanted to protest against the decision of the Los Angeles organisers to accept sponsorship of stretches of the torch relay in the United States.

This time the ceremony will be held in front of an audience limited to the members of the International Olympic Committee, the Greek and Chinese Olympic committees as well as the president of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, and vaccinated members of the media.

While Greek skiers will run the first and last legs, and a Chinese participant will also carry the torch in a brief relay, organisers have decided to skip the usual journey round the country.

"There will be no Torch Relay on Greek soil and following the Lighting Ceremony in Ancient Olympia the Olympic Flame will be transferred to the Acropolis where it will stay overnight," they said on Oct 12.

They said that on the next morning it would be carried to the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, a second-century arena used in both the 1896 and 2004 Games, and handed over to the delegation from Beijing 2022 to be flown to China.

Traditionally, the flame travels hundreds of kilometres round Greece, visiting fifty cities and archaeological sites, relayed by artists and athletes from around the world.

In March 2020, as coronavirus began to spread round Greece, spectators ignored health precautions and flocked to the relay.

It was abandoned on the second day after leaving Olympia in nearby Sparta, where crowds gathered to cheer Greek-American actor Billy Zane, best known for "Titanic", and British actor Gerard Butler, who played King Leonidas of Sparta in the movie "300".

This year the rehearsal on Sunday falls on the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee which is holding ceremonies to celebrate//CNA

FILE PHOTO: Cars are parked in the courtyard of Skoda Auto's factory in Mlada Boleslav, Czech Republic, as the company restarts production after shutting downdue to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) . Picture taken in Mlada Boleslav, Czech Republic, April 27, 2020. REUTERS/David W Cerny/File Photo - 

Czech car makers will produce quarter a million fewer cars than expected this year due to the global shortage of chips and the automotive sector will lose 200 billion crowns (US$9.14 billion) in sales, the Auto Industry Association (AutoSAP) said on Sunday.

AutoSAP said domestic passenger car production dropped by 53.1per cent in September year-on-year, to 56,157 cars.

It said the chip shortage impact would exceed that of pandemic shutdowns last year, and called on the government to activate an aid programme created amid the coronavirus pandemic last year to compensate firms for wages of idled workers.

AutoSAP said production rose 2.9per cent year-on-year cumulatively in the January-September period to 831,653 cars.

"Already since August, production has been significantly affected by output curbs and the September statistic confirms the negative trend," AutoSAP said.

The country's biggest producer, Volkswagen 's Skoda Auto, has said it would significantly limit or shut production at its Czech plants from next week, possibly until the end of the year.

The car sector is the backbone of the highly industrialised Czech economy, employing 180,000 workers, and makes up a quarter of industrial output.

SAP said 120 billion crowns in revenue would be lost at car makers and a further 80 billion at parts suppliers. The 200 billion crowns in revenue equals to about 3.3per cent of the country's expected nominal gross domestic product this year.

The other car makers with assembly plants in the Czech Republic are Hyundai - which has been the least affected by the chip shortage - and Toyota//CNA