Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago. Due to the country's huge size it contains a high degree of diversity in terms of religion and traditional belief systems. Although Indonesia has a Muslim-majority population, it is a secular democracy with a constitution that guarantees all Indonesian citizens the freedom of worship, each according to his or her own religion or belief (this system does not function perfectly in reality, however). Still, it means that Indonesia contains many (mostly religion-inspired) public holidays on which the nation's financial markets are closed.

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As is widely known, especially to those who have visited certain beaches in Bali, Indonesia needs to combat water pollution, and specifically plastic waste. While local authorities on Bali announced earlier this week to enact a ban on single-use plastics, such as shopping bags, styrofoam food packets and straws (while Jakarta may follow suit), Indonesia's Industry Ministry expressed it opposes an earlier plan to impose an excise tax on plastic bags.

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While the economy of Indonesia can be labelled “healthy” in 2018 as the country’s slow process of accelerating economic growth continued amid very challenging external conditions (albeit it needs waiting for the Q4 GDP growth data  to confirm this statement), not everything went rosy for Southeast Asia’s largest economy in 2018. In fact, for Indonesia, 2018 is characterized by a multitude of devastating and fatal disasters.

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Concern about Indonesia's Q4-2018 current account deficit as well as the value of the rupiah exchange rate should increase now the country posted a big USD $2.05 billion monthly trade deficit in November 2018. It is the highest monthly trade deficit for Southeast Asia's largest economy since July 2013.

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