Candy and biscuits industries have increased production by 15% to meet demands from the Asian and European markets which had shifted from China due to dairy products tainted with melamine, Antara reported on Tuesday.

Domestic cement consumption in October rose 24.3% to 3.11 million tons, industry data distributed by PT Semen Gresik showed on Thursday, Reuters reported.State-owned Semen Gresik, the country's largest cement maker, said its total sales in October, including exports, rose 8% to 1.45 million tons.

Indonesia's palm oil output in 2008 is likely to rise by 2.0 million tons from 2007 to 19.33 million, increasing the country's exports and stocks, Hamburg-based oilseeds analyst Oil World forecast on Tuesday, Reuters reported.Indonesian palm oil exports are likely to rise to 14.

Bank Indonesia (BI) on Friday reiterated that it has no plan to resort to capital controls following its announcement limiting purchases of foreign currencies without underlying transactions, Dow Jones reported.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati says Indonesia's economic growth may fall to as low as 5% next year, according to Bloomberg News. She also warned that Indonesia was at risk from global trends but hoped to stay out of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) emergency package.

Panca Nugraha, The Jakarta Post, Mataram For many years investors have been holding land use permits on 18,600 hectares of land on Lombok and Sumbawa Islands in West Nusa Tenggara without developing the property.

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono on Tuesday defended Indonesia’s drive to expand oil palm plantations, despite a demand by environmentalists for a moratorium on deforestation.Speaking in his keynote address at the opening of the sixth annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil...

Originally Posted By: biznewsIn order to accelerate the process, NTB administration has asked the central government to immediately issue a regulation on licensing to follow up on Law no. 25/2007 on Investments. the answer to licensing obstacles is more licensing?!

Tuesday, 18 November, 2008 | 18:27 WIBTEMPO Interactive, Mataram:West Nusa Tenggara (NTB)Investments Agency's Promotion chief, Manggaukang Rabah, said not many investors have been attracted to his area because of licensing obstacles.

Indonesia is one of the largest producers of mineral resources in the world. In tin, it comes in second after China, in coal it is third after Australia and South Africa, and the list goes on. Minerals and related products account for 19 percent of the county’s total exports.

Indonesia, which holds the world’s single-biggest gold deposit and second-largest copper reserves, may ban exports of all ores in five years, forcing companies to sell processed products that fetch higher profits.

Two local poultry producers, PT Charoen Pokhpand Indonesia Tbk and PT Japfa Comfeed Indonesia Tbk, posted strong net profits in the first nine months of the year on the back of robust sales and higher prices for feed.

Companies in Batam, Riau Islands Province, are protesting an electricity rate increase that one industry official says will cause 100,000 layoffs next year.Abdullah Gosse, the deputy chairman of investment and trade at the provincial chamber of commerce, said on Tuesday that the increase was...