One of Indonesia's priority infrastructure projects in the 2016-2019 period is the Palapa Ring project. This project, involving an undersea fiber-optic cable network that stretches across 13,000 kilometers and an onshore network of nearly 22,000 kilometers, aims to provide fast broadband Internet to Indonesians in both the urban and rural areas. The project is the first government-to-business cooperation scheme within Indonesia's telecommunication sector that utilizes the so-called "availability payment method".

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The Finance Ministry of Indonesia announced that it has removed a withholding tax on interest payments on its global sovereign bonds (surat berharga negara, or SBN). Previously this tax was set at 15 percent for Indonesia-based investors and 20 percent for non-resident investors. By removing the withholding tax Indonesia's authorities aim to see its global bond yields fall by 15-20 percent. Indonesia's bond yields have been the highest in Southeast Asia. The removal of the withholding tax is effective retroactively from 1 January 2016.

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On 26 June 2016, Indonesia Investments released the latest edition of its newsletter. This free newsletter, which is sent to our subscribers once per week, contains the most important news stories from Indonesia that have been reported on our website over the last seven days. Most of the topics involve economic matters such as the impact of the "Brexit" on Indonesia, the lower benchmark interest rate of Bank Indonesia, Indonesia's trade balance, the Tax Amnesty Bill, commodities, and much more.

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Indonesia's House of Representatives and the government seem to agree that the Tax Amnesty Bill, a controversial proposal from the central government to make it attractive for (former) tax evaders to come clean and repatriate their funds to Indonesia, should come into effect soon, perhaps even as early as 1 July 2016. Indonesian lawmaker Supriyatno, who leads a parliamentary working group that discusses the bill, said all factions - except two - have reached a compromise on the Tax Amnesty Bill. A total of ten factions joined the discussions.

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