Realistic Government, Economic Growth This Year Stocks At 5.1 Percent

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The government through the Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) admits that economic growth in 2023 will not reach the upper limit that has been set, which is 5.3 percent.

Head of the Fiscal Policy Agency (BKF) Febrio Kacaribu revealed that this assumption is based on the current risk of a slowdown in the world economy which has an impact on Indonesia's trade performance.

"The government is optimistic that the national economic growth rate in 2023 is estimated at around 5.1 percent," he said in a written statement quoted on Tuesday, August 8.

According to Febrio, the global weakening signal has been seen from the overall export achievement which contracted by 2.75 percent year on year (yoy) in the second quarter of 2023. The same thing also happened to imports which fell minus 3.08 percent. In fact, Indonesia's imports are dominated by raw materials/industrial collectors.

The government will continue to monitor and anticipate the current risks of the world's economic slowdown, especially the impact on national exports. The push for the sustainability of the downstream stage will continue to be carried out to boost national export performance. The government will also continue to take full advantage of various international economic cooperation forums to expand the export market for national products," said Febrio.

Separately, Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto said that the government would accelerate state spending in the second half in order to achieve a high economic growth rate. This is because government spending tends to be quite sloping in the first two quarters of 2023 with a new budget absorption of 41 percent of the APBN ceiling.

"The lever is in the third quarter. We will see how government spending will encourage this, especially in large ministries/agencies (K/L) to run strategic infrastructure programs, labor-intensive, agriculture, and others," said Airlangga.

For information, this year the government targets economic growth figures in the range of 4.5 percent to 5.3 percent. Meanwhile, the achievement in the first quarter of 2023 was 5.03 percent and in the second quarter of 2023 it was 5.17 percent.