The government of Indonesia is nearing completion of the forming of holding companies for state-owned enterprises that are active in the oil & gas and mining sectors. It now only requires signing by Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Last year Widodo approved plans to create five state holding companies in energy, mining, construction, housing, and financial services. Fully state-owned aluminium producer Inalum and energy company Pertamina will be the holding companies for activities in the mining and oil & gas sectors, respectively.

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There are few signs that Indonesian stocks and the rupiah will rebound on Tuesday (25/08). Benchmark stock indices of China and Japan continued to fall directly after opening on Tuesday and are therefore expected to drag down other markets in Asia. Yesterday, major markets in the USA and Europe slumped, while commodity prices hit new lows (oil slid below USD $40 per barrel for the first time since 2009). The rupiah continued to weaken after opening on Tuesday to IDR 14,065 per US dollar by 09:06 am local Jakarta time.

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In response to the release of Indonesia’s official Q2-2015 GDP growth figure, which puts the country’s economic growth pace at 4.67 percent year-on-year (a six-year low), President Joko Widodo said the economy of Indonesia is bound to improve in the second quarter of the year, particularly from September onwards. Widodo said slowing economic growth was the result of troubled government budget absorption at both the central level and regional level. Moreover, the country has been plagued by external factors.

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As companies' corporate earnings reports covering the first quarter of 2014 have been released since the last couple of weeks, it is interesting to take a quick look at the top ten most profitable Indonesian state-owned companies (SOE) that are listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). The ten companies are ranked on highest net profit in Q1-2014 in the table below. It is interesting to note that four of these companies are banks, while there are two pairs of cement producers and construction companies.

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One characteristic of the Indonesian economy is that the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) play an important role in this USD $1.0 trillion economy. They not only play an important role because some of them rank among Indonesia’s biggest companies (in terms of profit, sales and assets), thereby generating plenty of money for the government (in the form of tax revenue or dividend) while at the same time creating jobs for millions of Indonesians.

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There are 20 state-controlled, yet publicly-listed (on the Indonesia Stock Exchange) companies that have poor financial ratios, reflected by a high debt-to-equity ratio. This ratio indicates how much debt a company uses to finance its assets relative to the value of shareholders' equity, thus it measures a company's financial leverage. The ratio is calculated by dividing the company's total liabilities by its stockholders' equity.

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After being in negative territory for quite a while, the benchmark stock index of Indonesia (Jakarta Composite Index) finished 0.13 percent higher at the end of the trading day. In line with the major stock indices in the Asia-Pacific region, Indonesia’s main index climbed although gains were limited as investors are concerned about failed discussions between the Greek government and its creditors in the Eurozone. However, positive sentiments were still felt due to capital injections in Indonesian state-owned companies.

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