On one of the last trading days of 2014, Indonesia’s rupiah exchange rate is moving sideways. According to the Bloomberg Dollar Index, the currency of Southeast Asia’s largest economy had depreciated 0.04 percent against the US dollar by 11:15 am local Jakarta time. Last week, the rupiah had nearly touched IDR 13,000 per US dollar, its weakest level since the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, amid severe volatility on global currency markets triggered by bullish US dollar momentum and developments in Russia and China.

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Immediately after the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) opened on Tuesday (23/12), shares of palm oil producer Golden Plantation, which was listed today with company code GOLL, soared 21 percent to IDR 348 per share (from the initial price of IDR 288). Golden Plantation was the 24th (and last) company to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) on the IDX in 2014. The company owns seven oil palm plantations with a total area of 49,000 hectares. About 35 percent of this total area is planted.

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Indonesia’s export of natural rubber is forecast to reach 2.58 million tons in 2015, roughly similar to this year’s expected export performance but a 10 percent decline from the country’s rubber export in 2013. This year, local rubber companies have been negatively affected by sluggish global demand triggering international rubber prices touching three-year lows. Rubber production in Indonesia in 2014 is expected to reach 3.5 million tons, of which 90 percent is exported abroad (mostly to the USA, Japan, China, India and Brazil).

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The trade balance of Indonesia is expected to show another deficit in November 2014 as oil and gas imports in combination with weak commodity exports continue to plague the balance. However, Executive Director at the Economic and Monetary Policy Department of Indonesia’s central bank (Bank Indonesia) Juda Agung said that the deficit will most likely turn into a surplus soon. Still, another monthly trade deficit implies that the country’s wide current account deficit has few chances to improve markedly at the year-end.

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