Rupiah Potentially Continues Weakening, This Is The Factor

US dollar (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The Rupiah exchange rate in trading Tuesday, February 27, 2024 is expected to weaken again against the United States (US) dollar.

Quoting Bloomberg, the Rupiah exchange rate on Monday, February 26, the rupiah spot exchange rate was closed down 0.21 percent Rp15,630 per US dollar. Meanwhile, the Jakarta Interbank Spot Dollar Rate (Jisdor) of Bank Indonesia (BI) closed lower by 0.29 percent to a price level of Rp15,635 per US dollar.

Director of PT Profit Forexindo Berjangka Ibrahim Assuaibi said the current focus is on the US PCE price index data, which is a measure of Fed inflation which will be released this weekend.

"The data is expected to provide more clues regarding US inflation after a series of data that is difficult for December and January," he said in a statement quoted on Tuesday, February 27.

Several Fed officials will also deliver a speech this weekend, and are expected to repeat the central bank's prospects for higher interest rates for a longer period of time, amid concerns over high inflation.

In addition, this week's focus is on Japan's consumer price index (CPI) data for January, which will be released on Tuesday. The figure is expected to show core inflation is in the range of the Bank of Japan's annual target of 2 percent, thus providing a smaller push for the central bank to initiate aggressive tightening of policies.

From an internal point of view, Indonesia is far from the potential economic crisis, even the possibility of a potential crisis is also very small, still below 5 percent, although the price increase in several items is said to trigger the Indonesian economic crisis.

Some increase in goods, both fuel and electricity, is not all true. Ibrahim saw that the opportunity for an increase in fuel prices,ron 90 or Pertalite fuel will still be maintained at the current level.

Even though there is an increase in crude prices in the international market, this will further affect non-subsidized fuel whose volume or consumption to the total tends to be limited. So that even if there is an increase in inflation caused by non-subsidized fuel prices, the impact will not be significant.

Regarding rice prices, there is a tendency for prices to be influenced by the el nino factor. For this reason, his party sees inflation in February 2024 which will be released by BPS in early March, there is a tendency for food inflation to be relatively high. However, overall and according to consensus, food inflation or overall inflation is still maintained below 3 percent.

In terms of public consumption itself, when referring to consumer surveys and retail sales surveys of Bank Indonesia, both do not show worrying things or in this case there is a very significant decrease in people's purchasing power.

Ibrahim estimates that the rupiah will fluctuate but closed lower on trading Tuesday, February 27 in the price range of IDR 15,620- IDR 15,670 per US dollar.