Rupiah Opens Stronger In Early 2022, Observer: This Year Omicron Still Needs To Be Watched

JAKARTA - The rupiah exchange rate transacted between banks in Jakarta, Monday, January 3, opened higher, starting the first trading in 2022.

This morning, the rupiah moved up 7 points or 0.05 percent to IDR 14,256 per US dollar compared to the position at the close of the previous trade of IDR 14,263 per US dollar.

"Early trading this year, there was a slight strengthening against the US dollar, but the overall movement seems to be still in the correction zone after reaching its strongest level at the end of last year at IDR 14,220", said Indonesia Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (ICDX) analyst, Nikolas Prasetia, as quoted by Antara.

According to Nikolas, there are several things to watch out for at the beginning of this year, among them is the Omicron variant which had reached its highest level last week.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, the daily cases of COVID-19 are still around 100 cases per day, but the case in DKI has again scored the most additional cases in the last 1.5 months.

"We need to watch out for the movement of the rupiah at the beginning of this week, in addition to international issues such as the Fed regarding its stimulus policies and interest rates", said Nikolas.

Meanwhile, the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the country on Sunday, January 2 reached 174 cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 to 4.26 million.

The number of cases that died due to exposure to COVID-19 reached 1 case, bringing the total to 144,097 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of recovered cases increased by 190 cases, bringing the total recovered patients to 4.11 million cases. Thus, the total active cases of COVID-19 reached 4,382.

For vaccination, the number of people who have been injected with the first dose of vaccine has reached 165.9 million people and 114.1 million people who have received the second dose of vaccine from the target of 208 million people.

Nikolas said the rupiah today will move in the range of IDR 14,210 per US dollar to IDR 14,310 per US dollar.

On Friday, December 31, the rupiah closed up 7 points or 0.05 percent to a position of IDR 14,263 per US dollar compared to the position at the close of the previous trade of IDR 14,270 per US dollar.