Airlangga Invites All Parties To Always Support Government Policies In Pandemic Control: To Accelerate Economic Recovery

Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto. (Photo: Doc. Coordinating Ministry for the Economy)

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto invites all economic players to take advantage of the momentum of economic growth by accelerating investment.

"I invite us to jointly accelerate growth momentum by encouraging investment and also continue to support government policies in controlling the pandemic so that we are able to realize a faster national economic recovery," said Coordinating Minister Airlangga Hartarto in his statement, quoted from Antara, Wednesday, July 14.

Coordinating Minister Airlangga emphasized that the government is committed to supporting investment and ease of doing business through the Job Creation Act. This also includes providing incentives for priority business fields with certain criteria.

"This policy is expected to increase productive investment that creates new businesses so that it will open up many job opportunities and the community is expected to take advantage of existing opportunities," said Airlangga.

Airlangga said in terms of national economic recovery, the momentum of economic recovery can be felt with the improvement of the Indonesian economy in the first quarter of 2021 with only a contraction of 0.74 percent (yoy).

"This momentum must be maintained, one of which is by accelerating investment so that the economy can recover faster, although currently there are challenges due to the escalation of COVID-19 cases, especially the delta variant," he said.

Current domestic demand, he continued, has improved and has been responded to by increased production activity in the business sector, such as the manufacturing, trading and construction industries. The Indonesian Manufacturing PMI Index in June 2021 remained at the expansion level of 53.5.

Indonesia's manufacturing activity is higher than other ASEAN countries, such as Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia. With the increase in production activity, the negative impact of the pandemic on employment can also be gradually overcome.

Meanwhile, from the external side, Indonesia was helped by a trade balance surplus for 13 consecutive months, supported by rising global commodity prices.

Airlangga emphasized that this would provide positive sentiment for Indonesia's export-import activities going forward. At the same time, the return of foreign capital inflows and the maintained level of the current account deficit will provide a solid foundation for the resilience of Indonesia's external sector.

"With various economic policies, especially tax incentives, including the relaxation of VAT, the government sees that the recovery can continue and is expected to still grow at 7 percent growth rate in the second quarter of 2021," he said.