Coordinating Minister Airlangga: The Indonesian Economy Is More Resilient With A High Surplus Trade Balance
Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto said that the post-pandemic economic recovery will continue to be the government's focus.

Most recently, this effort has resulted in a positive performance on the trade balance which again continued the surplus trend in April 2022 and reached a value of 7.56 billion US dollars.

Airlangga revealed that this figure is the highest record that has surpassed the October 2021 period with a value of 5.74 billion US dollars.

"This achievement has made the Indonesian economy more resilient, considering that the trade balance is one of the main indicators in increasing foreign exchange reserves and maintaining the resilience of the external sector," he said in an official statement quoted on Wednesday, May 18.

Airlangga added that the trade balance is a very important determinant in accelerating the recovery. He said the positive performance was also shown in the export indicators which experienced a surplus of 27.32 billion US dollars.

Similar to the trade balance surplus, the export surplus was also able to surpass the previous record high in March 2022 which was recorded at 26.50 billion US dollars.

"The surplus performance on export value was influenced by the high prices of leading commodities such as CPO, coal, and nickel prices," he said.

Furthermore, the dominance of the industrial sector in export activities which reached 69.86 percent was also a stimulus in increasing the value of the export surplus, this is because export performance will lead to the basis of commodities with added value that continues to grow.

Then, the downstream program implemented by the government to encourage value-added commodities in the midst of increasing prices also contributed to the growth of export performance and was reflected in the April 2022 Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) at 51.9.

"In addition to the downstream program, the government will continue to increase the value of Indonesia's exports through various efforts, one of which is by carrying out export promotion programs by increasing bilateral and multilateral cooperation. The G20 Forum will also be optimized to explore various potentials for trade cooperation with various countries," concluded Coordinating Minister Airlangga.


The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)