A Neighbor Country Causing RI To Lose IDR 88 Trillion In A Year, How Come?

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA – Indonesia is known to have a deficit of around US$6 billion or the equivalent of IDR 88.8 trillion (the 2023 state budget exchange rate is IDR 14,800) from Australia.

This rate represents a deficit in Indonesia's non-oil and gas trade balance with neighboring countries in the south over the past year.

This was revealed when the Head of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) Margo Yuwono submitted the annual report on exports and imports for the 2022 period.

In his explanation, Magro revealed that the trade balance was short due to the higher value of RI's imports of US$9.23 billion compared to exports of US$3.22 billion.

"We have a deficit with Australia of US$6 billion in 2022," he told the media crew as quoted by the editorial team on Tuesday, January 17.

Margo explained, the commodity contributing to the highest deficit came from imports of mineral fuels (HS 27) with a value of US$1.93 billion.

"Then the next biggest contributor is cereal commodities (HS 10) with a value of US$1.72 billion," he said.

Furthermore, Margo revealed that the third largest deficit came from imports of metal ore, silver, and ash (HS 26) amounting to US$880 million.

Apart from Australia, two friendly countries which are also the biggest sources of deficit are Thailand and China. Margo detailed, Indonesia's deficit with Thailand was US$3.96 billion due to higher imports, namely US$10.85 billion compared to exports of US$6.89.

"The biggest deficit was contributed by plastic commodities/plastic goods (HS 39) of USD 1.3 billion, as well as sugar commodities (HS 17) and machinery (HS 84) with USD 1.19 billion and 1. 17 billion US dollars,” he said.

As for China, Indonesia recorded a record loss of 3.61 billion US dollars with imports of 67.1 billion US dollars and exports of 63.5 billion US dollars.

While the contributing commodities included machinery (HS 84) worth 15.8 billion US dollars, electrical machinery/equipment (HS 85) 14 billion US dollars, and plastic commodities/plastic goods (HS 39) amounting to 2.6 billion US dollars.

Even so, Indonesia in general, in 2022, can still record a trade balance surplus of 54.4 billion US dollars.

This slick score was obtained due to the higher export value of US$291.9 billion compared to US$237.5 billion of imports.

This result at the same time extends the record surplus that has been printed by RI for 32 consecutive months or since May 2020.