Growing Higher, The Trade Balance Can Be Capai 60 Billion US Dollars This Year

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto said Indonesia's trade balance is estimated to have a surplus of 60 billion US dollars this year.

"This figure is greater than the trade balance surplus during the last commodity price explosions in 2010 and 2011 which were around US$22 billion and US$26 billion," said Coordinating Minister Airlangga at the event "Indonesia's Economic Priorities" quoted by Antara, Tuesday, October 25.

Meanwhile, during January to September 2022, Indonesia's trade balance has recorded a surplus of 39.87 billion US dollars.

According to Airlangga, the strong performance of the external sector has also succeeded in supporting consumption and investment consistently. Thus, the government projects that the economy will grow by around 5.2 percent on an annual basis by the end of this year.

Until the second quarter of 2022, the Indonesian economy went very well and managed to reverse the direction of the COVID-19 pandemic so that it could grow 5.44 percent on an annual basis.

In addition, he said that various international institutions also had approximately the same estimates, one of which was the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which remains optimistic that Indonesia will grow 5.3 percent this year, even though the global economy only grew 3.2 percent.

"Then for 2023 the IMF projects that Indonesia will be able to grow in the range of 5 percent compared to the global one which is only able to grow 2.7 percent," said Airlangga Hartarto.

However, he reminded that the world is currently haunted by the formation of dark clouds that are collecting speeds for the possibility of perfect storms aka perfect storms.

The clouds come from five factors, namely COVID-19, conflict in Ukraine, commodity prices, living expenses, and climate change.

Even so, he believes that the whole world, including Indonesia, can face the storm with stronger confidence in policy strategies on priorities to overcome future challenges.