The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) suspended trading of the shares of coal miner Bumi Resources between 1 July and 4 October 2016 because the company had not reported its financial report (covering the corporate earnings of 2015) in time. On Tuesday (04/10) Bumi Resources, part of the controversial Bakrie Group conglomerate, finally announced that it recorded a net loss of USD $1.9 billion over 2015. This poor performance was mainly attributed to the impairment of assets and write-offs for its receivables.

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The central bank of Indonesia (Bank Indonesia) has become slightly less optimistic about Indonesia's economic growth in the third quarter of 2016. Bank Indonesia revised down its growth projection to below the 5 percent (y/y) mark for Q3-2016 (from an earlier forecast of 5.2 percent). However, the lender of last resort still expects to see a better performance compared to the 4.73 percent (y/y) pace posted in Q3-2015. Meanwhile, low inflation and a strong rupiah could result in another interest rate cut in Southeast Asia's largest economy.

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The World Bank estimates that by 2025 Indonesia will have 68 percent of its population living in cities or urban communities. As such, Indonesia’s cities are among the fastest growing cities in the world. However, without a unified spatial data system, urban planning is a daunting task while urbanization challenges become harder to predict. The World Bank's City Planning Labs project provides support for the development of a single spatial data infrastructure in the cities of Indonesia.

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Non-governmental environmental organization Greenpeace blocked all import and export channels of crude palm oil (CPO) trader IOI on Tuesday morning (27/09) in the harbor of Rotterdam (the Netherlands), the city that acts as palm oil’s gateway into Europe. Greenpeace activists decided to take action after a Greenpeace International report showed that palm oil from companies that are reportedly involved in forest destruction, peatland fires and child labor is still flowing into Europe and the USA through IOI facilities.

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