Friday, 25 September 2026 · Daily Market Intel

Market IntelFri, 25 Sept

Jakarta cosmetics trader's daily sales fall from US$280 to under US$56.

Kiosk squeeze focus · diesel bill · cheap voices

Someone's payday
- Jakarta's Pasar Pondok Labu still opens daily, so why can Farid barely sell US$56? — detikFinance
  Farid sells cosmetics from a corner kiosk in Pasar Pondok Labu, a South Jakarta market. His daily sales fell from over US$280 to under US$56, and his margin from 30-40% to 15% or less.
  Positive-sum angle: Shoppers moved to their phones, and the stock, suppliers and regulars can follow them. A trader who takes orders by chat and ships from the kiosk keeps the shelf, and a landlord who reprices the corner keeps the floor full.
  What's the impact: A Jakarta market trader should turn the kiosk into a pickup and shipping point before the next rent renewal. Farid says a corner kiosk once rented for US$1,400 (Rp25 million) a year; he puts what it can carry now at US$560.
Your costs
- Should a Philippine delivery van reprice this week? Diesel is up US$0.29 a litre since 1 September — Philstar
  Philippine diesel rose US$0.14 a litre on 22 September, the third big increase this month and US$0.29 in three weeks. The Department of Energy blames a drone attack that damaged Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline.
  Positive-sum angle: Energy Secretary Sharon Garin certified that Dubai crude averaged over US$80 a barrel for a month, the step that lets the budget committee weigh cutting the fuel excise, the fixed per-litre tax. A cut would lower costs for every jeepney, bus and delivery fleet at once.
  What's the impact: A Philippine courier or logistics operator should reprice per-kilometre rates this week, not at month-end. By CÈ's arithmetic, a van burning 1,000 litres a month now pays about US$290 (P18,310) more than it did on 1 September.
The tool
- Can a one-person shop voice its own product clips? Google's new Gemini TTS offers 2,000 voices — MarkTechPost
  Google released Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Flash-Lite TTS, text-to-speech models that read a typed script aloud in 2,000 voices across more than 100 languages. Users direct the tone line by line in plain words.
  Positive-sum angle: A voiceover that once needed a studio booking now takes a typed paragraph, so a one-person shop can post as many product clips as a brand. Voice artists can clone their own voice, with the consent recording Google requires, and license it per clip.
  What's the impact: A Jakarta or Manila trader moving stock online can script ten 15-second product clips this week in Google AI Studio's free playground. The opening sits with local agencies: Bahasa and Tagalog voice packs for market sellers, which Google's launch list does not name.

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