ADB: The Prospect Of The Indonesian Economy Until The End Of 2022 Is Better Than The Asian And Global Regions

Illustration. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for Indonesia Jiro Tominaga sees that overall Indonesia has strong momentum throughout the remainder of 2022. "Indonesian prospects tend to be more positive than the global or regional Asia," said Jiro in the Capital Market Summit an Expo (CMSE) 2022, quoted from Antara, Friday, October 14. Indonesia has been on a solid recovery path from the COVID-19 pandemic. A major uncertainty for Indonesia, which led to lower ADB projections in April 2022, was the result of a potential spike in the Omicron variant, the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and global economic volatility as a whole. However, since then, Jiro assessed that COVID-19 in Indonesia has been significantly restrained under the strong domestic demand. In terms of exports, the strong demand and high export prices of Indonesian commodities encourage export value and volume. Meanwhile, state revenues experiencing windfall allow for larger subsidy spending and a smaller deficit in the State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBN). According to him, there is indeed a risk of decreasing global growth and inflation, but this condition will not really be felt by Indonesia until early next year. "So for this year, we estimate economic growth, current account surplus, and higher inflation for Indonesia than April 2022," he said. Meanwhile, ADB increased Indonesia's economic growth projection in 2022 from 5 percent in April 2022 to 5.4 percent in September 2022, on the other hand in 2023 it was lowered from 5.2 percent to 5 percent. Domestic inflation estimates were also increased from 3.6 percent to 4.6 percent in 2022, while in 2023 it was increased from 3 percent to 5.1 percent. Meanwhile, for current transactions, the surplus was increased from zero percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 0.5 percent of GDP in 2022 and then increased from a deficit of 0.5 percent of GDP to a surplus in the range of zero percent of GDP. "For next year, we see Indonesia's more moderate economic growth, lower current account deficits, and higher inflation," said Jiro.