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Today the Indonesian central bank, Bank Indonesia, increased again the key interest rate by 25 basis points to 8.75%. This was third rate increase after Bank Indonesia increased their rates to 8.25% in May 2008 and 8.50% in June 2008.

Bank Indonesia, headed by Governor Boediono wants to avoid second round price effects and hopes to keep inflation below 12.5% in 2008. On July 1st, the National Statistics Office reported that consumer prices rose by more than 11%, based on a new consumption pattern. Without this modification consumer prices would have risen by 12.8% in June 2008.

On August 5th, 2008 Bank Indonesia will hold its next regular monthly monetary policy meeting.

Today the National Statistics Office released the latest employment report based on the Labor Force Survey (LFS) April 2008. Regarding to the report the unemployment rate climbed to 8% in April 2008 compared to 7.6% in April 2007, while the employment rate dropped to 92% in April 2008 compared to 7.4% a year ago.

In April 2008 the number of unemployed persons was reported at 2.9 million. The total employed population was registered at 33.5 million. While 49.6% of the employed were in the services sector, 35.5% were in the agriculture sector and 14.9% in the industry sector.