When on Friday afternoon (30 December 2016) the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) closed its doors it effectively brought the year 2016 to an end in terms of stock trading on the local bourse. On Friday Indonesia's benchmark Jakarta Composite Index fell 0.11 percent to 5,296.71 points after two days of impressive gains. However, when looking at full-year 2016 the Jakarta Composite Index climbed 15.32 percent, hence being the second-best performing (national) benchmark stock index (after Thailand) in the Southeast Asian region in 2016.

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Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), said the year 2016 was the worst year over the past 14 years in terms of natural disasters in Indonesia. A total of 2,342 natural disasters, including landslides, floods, storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, were counted by the agency, up 35.2 percent year-on-year (y/y) from 1,732 natural disasters in the preceding year.

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Tito Karniavan, Chief of Indonesia's National Police, said a total of 33 (alleged) Muslim terrorists were killed in Indonesia in full-year 2016, a steep increase from the seven Islamic militants that were killed in the preceding year. These alleged terrorists died when they resisted security forces during their arrest. These actions also led to the death of one police officer as well as 11 wounded officers this year. Meanwhile, the number of terror crime cases rose to 170 in full-year 2016, more than doubling from 82 cases in 2015.

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Indonesia's Ministry of Trade re-introduces a USD $3 per ton export tax for crude palm oil (CPO) shipments in January 2017 as the government's reference palm oil price exceeded the USD $750 per ton threshold that separates the existence of export duties from zero rates. The government's reference price was set at USD $788.26 per ton for January 2017, said Dody Edward, Director General for Foreign Trade at the Trade Ministry.

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