OJK Reveals Financial Services Sector Performance Remains Stable Until April 2024

JAKARTA - The Financial Services Authority (OJK) said that the global economy will still be met with uncertainty due to geopolitical tensions.

Chairman of the OJK Board of Commissioners Mahendra Siregar said that the stability of the financial services sector until April 30, 2024, was maintained.

This contributes to maintaining the performance of the national economy amidst the high global uncertainty.

"The stability of national financial services is still maintained with a consistent intermediation performance and supported by adequate liquidity and strong capital amid global uncertainty," he said at the Press Conference of the Financial Services Sector and OJK Policy Results. April 2024 Monthly RDK, Monday, May 13.

Mahendra said the United States' economic growth slowed down by 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2024. This figure is down when compared to the fourth quarter of 2023 of 3.4 percent. This is due to a significant increase in imports.

Nevertheless, Mahendra assessed that the US economic performance still shows signs of a higher strengthening than the original expectations.

"This encourages the return of high-for-longer interest rates to decrease. This means that the estimated cut in the Fed Fund Rate rate will decrease in the near future," he said.

While in contrast to The Fed, Mahendra said the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) were faced with a dilemma between low economic growth and high inflation in the European region.

However, market consensus and expectations hope that ECB and BoE will lower interest rates to encourage economic growth.

Mahendra said the domestic economy, inflation has increased, indicating a recovery in demand during the election period and the month of Ramadan.

Manufacturing performance also experienced an increase in performance driven by an increase in order volume.

The domestic economic growth in the first quarter of 2024 was 5.11 percent or higher than in the fourth quarter of 2023 which was 5.04 percent.

This growth was driven by non-profit consumption that served households with an increase of 24.3 percent and government consumption of 19.9 percent (YoY).

"In the future, it is necessary to observe the normalization of economic growth in line with the end of the General Election and Ramadan, as well as normalization of commodity prices that suppress export performance," he said.