Speech At The IMF - ASEAN Meeting, Sri Mulyani Called The Southeast Asian Economy Better THAN Other Regions

Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani and Governor of Bank Indonesia Perry Warjiyo (right) at a press conference on the results of the 4th FMCBG Meeting in Washington DC, United States, Thursday (13/10/2022). (Between/Satyagraha)

Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati reminded the importance of ASEAN's economic resilience to prevent the negative impact of global economic conditions which are still filled with uncertainty.

Sri Mulyani during her closing speech at the IMF-ASEAN Roundtable meeting in Washington DC, USA, Saturday evening local time, said the resilience was important considering the IMF's report lowered the projected region by 2023 to 4.9 percent.

"In the World Economic Outlook (October 2022) report, the IMF has revised the decline in ASEAN-5 growth prospects in 2023 by 0.2 percentage points to 4.9 percent," he said as quoted by Antara.

The report states that most countries in the ASEAN region are projected to grow slower in 2023 than originally thought due to slowing global demand.

"However, overall the prospects for this region remain relatively better than many other regions," said Sri Mulyani.

To maintain recovery, ASEAN must continue to prioritize policies that protect household purchasing power amid rising prices, place confidence in the business sector, and aim to build stronger foundations for medium and long-term development through structural reforms.

Meanwhile, the IMF projects that the Indonesian economy will still grow in the range of 5 percent by 2023. However, that estimate is slightly below the projection of 5.2 percent by the end of 2022.

The Forum of the Ministers of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank of ASEAN member countries in the IMF-ASEAN Roundtable also discusses efforts by policymakers to balance between suppressing inflation and encouraging economic recovery.

In addition, ASEAN's resilience to the United States and European regions' monetary tightening policies also uses macroprudential policies to deal with the United States and European regions' monetary normalization policies, and burden sharing between fiscal and monetary policies.