Indonesia held its 79th independence ceremony on August 17 in the unfinished future capital of Nusantara.
- Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and Cabinet Ministers attended the Independence Day ceremony at the new Presidential Palace, built in the shape of the mythical eagle-winged protector figure Garuda.
- The new capital is being constructed to relieve pressure on Jakarta.
- Mr. Widodo began working at the new Presidential palace in Nusantara in late July and held his first Cabinet meeting there on August 13, 2024.
- The construction of the new capital began in mid-2022, spread over an area of about 2,600 square km carved out of Borneo’s jungle. With a population of about 275 million, Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
- Jakarta, with about 10 million people in the city limits and three times that number in the greater metropolitan area, floods regularly and its streets are so clogged that congestion costs the economy an estimated $4.5 billion a year.
- The air and groundwater in the old capital, on the northwestern coast of the Java island, are heavily polluted, and it has been described as the world’s most rapidly sinking city.
- It is estimated that one-third of the city could be submerged by 2050, because of uncontrolled groundwater extraction, as well as the rise of the Java Sea due to climate change.
