• Population: 19,400,000 inhabitants (according to the last estimate).
• Surface area: 65,607 km (i.e. 1/9th of France).
• Density: 290.9 inhabitants per km (in France, 107 inhabitants).
• Languages: Singhalese (74 %), Tamil (18.5 %) and English (10 %).
• Commercial capital: Colombo (1.5 million inhabitants).
• Administrative capital: Sri Jayawardhanapura.
• Illiteracy rate: 91.8 %.
• Infant mortality: 15.9 %.
• Cultivated land: 33 %.
• Gross national product per inhabitant: US$ 985 (end 2002).

Key data for Indonesia:

• Surface area: 1,826,444 km², i.e. almost 4 times as big as France.
• Population: 210 million inhabitants.
• Number of islands: the Indonesian archipelago, the biggest on the planet, has 13,677 islands, including nearly 6,000 that are inhabited. Sumatra is an Indonesian island. With a surface area of 470,000 km², it is the sixth biggest island in the world. Sumatra has approximately 40 million inhabitants.
• Capital: Jakarta. More than 9 million inhabitants, and 12 million if you include the urban agglomeration surrounding Jakarta known as "Jabotabek ". But the figure is expected to rise to 21 million inhabitants by the year 2015.
• Other large towns: Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Medan, Macassar and Denpasar.
• Languages: Bahasa Indonesia (official language), in addition to nearly 200 ethnic languages and dialects. English is useful. Dutch is spoken little.
• Religions: Indonesia is the biggest Muslim country in the world, with over 170 million believers (87 % of the population). Sunni Islam is the official State religion here, but the republican and religious laws remain separate. Furthermore, there are several Christian, Catholic and Protestant minorities (9 % of the population), in the Toraja region (Sulawesi), the Minahasa region (north-east of Sulawesi), Sumatra (the Bataks of Lake Toba), Timor and in the Malaku islands. Buddhism and animism are still flourishing. Hinduism is very widespread in Bali.
• Ethnic groups: approximately 300 ethnic groups. Sulawesi alone includes about thirty.