HSBC to Fund Indosat Satellite Second-largest mobile phone company PT Indosat has signed a $228.5 million financing agreement with HSBC to acquire a new satellite, Reuters reported. The Palapa-D satellite will replace Palapa-C2 which will come to the end of its service in the first quarter of 2011. Palapa-D will have a service life of 15 years.

PT Astra Agro Lestari will increase the size of its oil palm plantations by 13% to meet demand from India and China and provide for the use of palm oil as an alternate fuel, the International Herald Tribune reported on Monday (26/11/07). The company will add 30,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Aceh, East Kalimantan and in Sulawesi next year, it quoted company president director Widya Wiryawan as saying. Astra Agro had 228,000 hectares of oil palm plantations at the end of October.

Bandar Lampung (ANTARA News) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on the people and those in the government to make every possible effort to enable the country to achieve food self-sufficiency.

Tokyo (ANTARA News) - Indonesia`s ecotoursim needs to be managed in a serious way so that it will attract foreign tourists as this archipelagic country has great potentials in the sector, a Japanese ecotourism expert said. Prof Yoichiro Takanashi, director of the Japanese Ecotourism Society (JES), said here Tuesday Indonesia should develop its ecotourism sector in the long term as it would be of great benefit and increase the people`s awareness about the need to conserve the environment.

December 4, 2007 Source: Asia Pulse Pty Ltd via Checkbiotech Multinational company PT Monsanto has expressed readiness to invest around US$5 million in the development of a seed industry in Indonesia, said an Agriculture Ministry official. The company would develop seeds of such food crops as paddy, corn and soybean in the country, said Sutarto Alimoeso, a spokesman of the ministry's food crops directorate general, on Monday.

SINGAPORE - As industrialists, environmentalists and government officials open discussions in Bali, Indonesia, about the importance of combating global climate change, there is still clearly a long way to go before the rhetoric translates into substantial change in carbon-intensive energy consumption patterns. Underlining the gap between the environmental talk and commercial action is Asia's increasing reliance on coal to fuel large electricity generation expansion plans.

An investor-focused environment is needed before Indonesia can make the most out of its natural resources. A few weeks ago, I attended a panel discussion about the development of mining in emerging economies. The keynote speaker was a director of a major Brazilian mining company. He shared some interesting insights about CVRD, his company, in its journey to becoming a global commodities producer. Established in 1942 by the Brazilian government, CVRD went public in 1997.

The government's policy of limiting coal exports to about 150 million tons a year will last until 2025 in order to meet the surging demand from domestic buyers, a senior official at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry says. Simon Sembiring, the director general of mineral, coal and geothermal energy, said Tuesday in Jakarta that the policy had been adopted to ensure sufficient supplies on the domestic market.

The world is undergoing an unprecedented mining boom powered, by the explosive growth of the Chinese and Indian economies. In 2005 the highly regarded Fraser Institute Annual Mining Survey ranked Indonesia as, overall, the most prospective country in world. Yet with world-wide exploration expenditure expected to reach US$8 billion this year, Indonesia is only able to attract a very small amount of this exploration funding.

The Bali Land Grab: A Practical Guide to "Set Back" Rules for Building Along Beach or River Fronts. (12/1/2007) As an assistance to property buyers in Bali, here's a few highlight from Bali's Zoning Regulations of 2005 (Peraturan Daerah Provinsi Bali Nomor 3 Tahun 2005); Set Back Rules from Ocean Fronts • Set back rules for building along the seaside forbid buildings within a distance measured 100 meters from the high water mark.