Indonesia's Economic Growth Minus 0.74 Percent In The First Quarter Of 2021, Household Consumption Is Still Sluggish!

Central BPS Office in Jakarta (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) confirmed that Indonesia's economic growth during the first quarter of 2021 was still on a contractionary path with a record of minus 0.74 percent year-on-year (yoy) compared to the same period in 2020.

Meanwhile, household consumption was the source of the deepest contraction with minus 1.22 percent.

Head of BPS Suhariyanto said the score in the first three months of this year was lower than the fourth quarter of 2020 (quarter-to-quarter/qtq) with 0.95 percent.

"However, if we look at the second quarter 2020 period, the trend of improvement has begun to appear. This shows that the signs of economic recovery are getting clearer”, he said in a press conference broadcast virtually, Wednesday, May 5.

Suhariyanto added that structurally the formation of gross domestic product (GDP) of economic activity in the first trimester of this year did not change with 64.5 percent of them coming from five main sectors, namely industry, agriculture, trade, construction, and mining.

"So, what happens in these five sectors will greatly affect our economic growth", he said.

Moreover, continued Suhariyanto, the number of workers in these five fields is very large. Especially for the agricultural sector, the Head of BPS said that this sector has always grown at a positive level during the 2020 period to the present.

"And again in the first quarter of 2021, agriculture could grow by 2.95 percent. Of course, this is very encouraging, considering that around 30 percent of Indonesian workers work in this field", he explained.

To note, in 2020, Indonesia recorded a fairly deep contraction of economic growth with a record of minus 2.07 percent on an annual basis compared to the 2019 period. This book is also the deepest since the 1998 monetary crisis which was recorded at minus 13.16 percent.

BPS itself said that the low inflation rate due to stagnant consumption rates and limited community mobility were the causes of the slump in the growth rate over the past year.