Bank Permata Economist Optimistic That RI's Economy Grows 5.2 Percent In 2022

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Permata Bank Chief Economist Josua Pardede is optimistic that the Indonesian economy will grow 4.9 percent to 5.2 percent in 2022 as a whole, if you look at the economic achievements of the second quarter which grew 5.44 percent compared to the same period last year (year-on-year). -year/yoy).

"If we look at the first semester of 2022, our economic growth is quite solid and consumption has also returned to the 5 percent level, which is strongly influenced by developments in community mobility," said Josua, quoted from Antara, Wednesday, August 10.

Thus, he assessed that Indonesia's economic growth was quite resilient compared to most developed countries which were experiencing a slowdown.

Nevertheless, Josua reminded that there are still several risks that have the potential to cause the Indonesian economy to decline, namely the war between Russia and Ukraine, the challenges of the zero COVID-19 policy in China, as well as rising commodity prices that have pushed up global inflation.

At the same time, the increase in global inflation will also encourage a slowdown in the global economy.

Due to the various challenges that exist, all international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), have projected that global economic growth will tend to be lower this year, as well as next year.

It is different with Indonesia, he believes that although Indonesia's economic projections are also cut, domestic economic growth until the end of this year is likely to be quite resilient.

"But we have to consider the risk of inflation because commodity prices, even though they are slightly sloping, are still relatively higher than 2019. Likewise, container prices have not returned to normal conditions," he said.

On the other hand, he said that global inflation tends to be high and most of the global central banks have started to raise their benchmark interest rates, which is likely to affect the performance of the world economy in the second half of this year, which of course will also affect Indonesia's economic development.

Thus, domestic inflation is predicted to tend to be higher with the effect of increasing global inflation, which in the end is likely to hamper people's purchasing power, especially in the remainder of the year.