VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The 9th Forum Festival of Eastern Region of Indonesia (KTI), scheduled in October this year in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), is currently officially postponed over concerns of a further spread of COVID-19. As quoted by Antara News Agency,  Winarni Monoarfa, chief of the festival's working group, stated  on Wednesday that  this biennial festival -- a celebration for innovation and developmental achievement in the region -- is necessarily to be cancelled this year as her side awaits a change in the situational dynamics in the community. Monoarfa explained that the decision to cancel is a measure taken to contain the spread of coronavirus in society and also to support the NTT provincial government to maintain health and safety of its people during the pandemic//Ant

Iran is ready to cooperate with Indonesia in fulfilling health and medical devices to deal with corona virus (COVID-19). This was stated by President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani in a telephone connection with Indonesian President Joko Widodo recently. President Rouhani said that Iran is ready to supply the need of health devices such as examination devices, ventilators, CT scans, and N95 medical masks for Indonesia. President as quoted by Iranian News Agency, ISNA, reported by CNNIndonesia said that Iran has had successful achievements in science and technology, and in supplying and meeting the needs of these medical devices. The two leaders agreed to fight together in dealing with the spread of the corona virus through the exchange of experiences and scientific achievements in the handling of this pandemic.//trans-yati//(rri)

Sequoia Capital India has chosen 15 start-ups from Southeast Asia and India to participate in its third acceleration program, Surge 03. Three of the 15 are Indonesia-based early-stage start-ups, namely a bookkeeping application for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) BukuKas, edtech platform CoLearn and cloud kitchen service Hangry. Meanwhile, the other start-ups are from India, Singapore and Vietnam, with businesses in the software as a service (SaaS) sector as well as development tools, education, health and food and beverages. Surge and Sequoia Capital India managing director Rajan Anandan said in a written statement recently that the capital firm had been working with start-ups from Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam in two of its previous cohort programs. According to Rajan Anandan, the start-ups ecosystem in Southeast Asia is growing rapidly along with the development of its digital and mobile first economy//JP

Indonesia has raised another Rp 62.62 trillion (US$4.05 billion) from government debt papers (SUN) and is in talks with several development banks to raise another $750 million to finance its widening state budget amid the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The Finance Ministry’s director for government debt papers, Deni Ridwan, said the government had issued three series of bonds through private placements with commercial and shariah banks on Monday. Deni told The Jakarta Post by text message on Tuesday that banks are the buyers in the private placements as they look to meet Bank Indonesia’s new requirement of higher reserves in government bonds. Bank Indonesia (BI) requires that bank buy government bonds after cutting banks’ reserve requirement ratio by 200 basis points (bps) for commercial banks and 50 bps for sharia banks, providing the financial system with Rp 102 trillion in liquidity in a move that is expected to help the government fund the COVID-19 battle, Governor Perry Warjiyo said recently. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that the government is also in talks to earn $750 million worth of loans from several development banks, namely the Islamic Development Bank, the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The World Bank and the AIIB were also committed to providing $250 million in funds each for Indonesia’s COVID-19 response, according to the minister. The Asian Development Bank (ADB), meanwhile, has approved $1.5 billion in loans to support Indonesia’s efforts to strengthen public health and the economy//JP