Motorcycle sales in Indonesia increased 16.0 percent month-on-month (m/m) to 711,857 units in September 2014. Sigit Kumala, Chairman for Commercial Affairs at the Indonesian Motorcycle Association (AISI), said that improved motorcycle sales are caused by the start of the harvest season in several regions across Southeast Asia’s largest economy. Successful harvests have put downward pressure on commodity prices and thus have a positive impact on Indonesian’s purchasing power.

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Lin Che Wei, CEO of the Jakarta Old Town Revitalization Corporation, said that renovation of the Kota Tua area is expected to be finished before the start of the 2018 Asian Games. Kota Tua (Old Batavia) is the oldest part of Jakarta, located in the northern part of Indonesia’s capital city, spanning 1.3 square kilometres, and used to function as the centre of Dutch colonial rule in the 17th and 18th century. Currently, however, many buildings in the Kota Tua area are in a state of near collapse although the area has great tourism potential.

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Due to ongoing drought in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee grower (particularly the Arabica coffee beans variety), coffee futures have reached the highest level in over two years. Usually the month of October is a month that brings rainfall to the Minas Gerais region, the most important coffee growing region in Brazil. This year, however, there has been no rainfall (yet) in October meaning that the coffee beans are unable to ripe. Moreover, meteorologists estimate that the current drought will continue for at least another week.

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Both the Indonesian rupiah exchange rate and Indonesian stocks weakened sharply on Wednesday (08/10) due to internal and external factors. Externally, weakening stock indices on Wall Street on Tuesday (07/10) have a severe negative impact on the performance of Asian stocks today. Wall Street was down on the IMF’s downward revised outlook for global GDP growth in 2014 and 2015, as well as on Germany’s industrial production, which fell the most in five years in August 2014.

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