February 24, 2015 edition

Icy wind blows across Leather Lane in London on a cold January day. Despite the freezing temperatures, foods like falafel, burritos and potato jackets have already been set up for hungry passersby, who will soon arrive in droves.
Sonia Swales, 38, a housewife who lives within five minutes of the bustling street, refuses to be deterred by the frigid 2-degree Celsius temperatures: Nothing was going to get between her and the thing she missed most from her home country of Indonesia: tempe.

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More Smes articles in other editions

January 1, 1970 edition

Tucked away behind a house and a small unsuspecting laundry business in Duren Tiga, South Jakarta, is a dairy farm with 35 heads of cattle. Though barely noticeable from the road, the farm forms a unique element of Jakarta's history.

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January 1, 1970 edition

Abanner reading "Kroto Bond Indonesia" is plastered in front of Jalan RD Kosisasih in Bogor, West Java. Some 500 meters into the alley, six bamboo buildings stand on an area of 6,000 square meters. One building contains shelves holding 1,400 jars of red weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina).
Two other buildings store more than 1,000 jars filled with ants and white grain-like objects. These, said Ade Yudisra, 38, are ant larvae, called kroto in Javanese, and their high selling prices are why people buy weaver ants in the first place. Ade offers one kilogram for Rp60,000. If someone buys 100 jars, they can have them for Rp50,000 per kilogram.

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January 1, 1970 edition

Indonesia's economy is on track to grow five percent this year, the World Bank predicts, largely thanks to consumer spending. And the overwhelming majority of those consumers work for the kind of small or medium enterprise (SME) that make up 90 plus percent of Indonesia's firms, according to the Asia-Pacific Economic Consortium. But, for this rosy picture to play out, the main actorsconsumers and SMEsneed credit. As of now, only half of low-income' Indonesian adults have access to bank loans.

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January 13, 2015 edition

At a roadside shop in Medan, capital of North Sumatra, Monang Siagian approached his employee, Anto, at work painting a miniature house. After watching him for a while, Monang, 52, snatched a pair of pliers nearby and tapped them against a nail protruding from the little house's roof. "Don't you see the nail still sticking out?" he said, admonishing Anto. "Look over the whole thing!"
Monang, owner of the shop demands perfection. He does not want his products to harm the children who will play with the toy. The shop is the only place in Medan selling Barbie doll houses. He makes them from plywood painted in pink, purple and white. He also produces tiny furniture pieces, like sofas, cabinets, chairs and beds. One set sells for Rp150,000.

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