Indonesia unifies the time zone

From October 28, the Indonesian island nation spanning nearly 50 longitudes has only one time zone, instead of three. The change aims to improve labor productivity, information transmission efficiency, and promote economic development across the 240 million population.

For decades, Indonesia has 3 time zones, local style calls are western, central and eastern.

The capital Jakarta is in the western hour, earlier than the international time to go through the original London Meridian (GMT) 7 hours, or Vietnamese time (GMT + 7).

Meanwhile, the Sulawesi island cluster east of Borneo island with the largest city of Makassar is in the central time, 8 hours earlier than GMT (GMT + 8), and the hour with Singapore and Malaysia.

Farther east to the border of Papua New Guinea, the eastern time zone is 2 hours earlier than Jakarta (GMT + 9).

But from October 28, the central time zone (GMT + 8, time zone of Singapore, Malaysia and China) will be a common time across the entire territory of nearly 2 million square kilometers with more than 17,000 islands.

The move is aimed at boosting economic development across the country of 240 million people, Indonesian Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan said.

After adjustment, the Indonesian stock exchange will open 30 minutes slower than the Singapore and Malaysia stock exchanges, instead of the current 90 minutes.

'The benefit of this timing adjustment is to synchronize commercial and financial transactions (in Indonesia - PV) with regional markets , ' said economist PT Bank Danamon Indonesia.