• Indonesia Investments' Newsletter of 1 March 2015 Released

    On 1 March 2015, 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 in the last seven days. Most of the topics involve economic matters such as a forecast for February inflation, an analysis of the rupiah exchange rate, news from the coal mining and palm oil sectors, Islamic finance, the IPO of Mitra Keluarga Karyasehat, and more.

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  • February Inflation Update Indonesia: Rice Causing Inflationary Pressures

    Indonesian inflation is expected to have eased further in February 2015 on lower food prices. One notable exception, however, is rice. Rice prices have soared approximately 30 percent year-on-year (y/y) up to IDR 12,000 per kilogram in February. Higher rice prices have been caused by distribution obstacles for Raskin (‘rice for the poor’) operations in combination with this year’s late harvest season (between March and June). Fluctuation in prices of rice, the staple food of 250 million Indonesians, has a significant impact on inflation in Indonesia.

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  • Bank Indonesia Comfortable with Weak Rupiah to Improve Current Account

    The Indonesian rupiah exchange rate depreciated 0.79 percent to IDR 12,932 per US dollar according to the Bloomberg Dollar Index on Friday (27/02), its weakest level since end 2008, after the country’s central bank (Bank Indonesia) said it would not intervene too much to support the currency. Bank Indonesia said that it has no target level for the rupiah and will not go against the market. For the market these are signals that the central bank is comfortable with a weaker currency as that would improve the trade balance.

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  • Astra International: 2014 Profit of Indonesia’s Largest Firm Slightly Down

    Indonesia’s largest listed company in terms of market capitalization and one of the country’s largest diversified conglomerates, Astra International (which is often labelled the barometer of the Indonesian economy due to the company’s presence in various sectors, from car distribution to plantations, financial services and heavy equipment) posted mixed results in 2014. Based on Astra’s latest corporate earnings report, its full-year 2014 net profit fell 1.2 percent year-on-year (y/y) to IDR 19.2 trillion (USD $1.5 billion).

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