Last time i read, Indonesia's economy is the only one in ASEAN to project growth this year, because it is not dependent on exports but local consumption.
It's currency is also the only one in ASEAN to gain against the USD recently. But that could be due to Singapore's decision to ease its currency with respect to the USD due to their financial plight.
Unfortunately for indonesia, it will never benefit fully from its vast natural resources because the income were never brought back into the country but stored in banking centres, mostly in singapore, one of the top destination for tax evasion (The UK included).
Due to this, its currency is volatile, often manipulated by forex traders based in singapore.
The cost of this volatility is enormous to the local economy, but profitable to currency speculators.
The amount of Indonesian workers in Malaysia number in the millions, if you include illegals. Most are involved in construction and estate works, which so far, seems unaffected. this could be due to low prices of construction materials and many sees this as an opportunity to construct. Plus the Malaysian govenrment also sees this as an opportunity to build infrastructure at lower cost, such as commuter railways. But consumer spending has definitely dwindled by maybe 30-40% for non-essentials, which affects mostly local workforce.
Singapore does not employ many Indonesian for their menial work, preffering to employ those from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh and southern india. Recently, they have decided to open these jobs to those from China and you can see these at hawker centres and coffe shops, while Phillipinos are employed in hotels and with BBC on its morning biz reports, which is based in singapore.
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