Bank Indonesia Governor Perry Warjiyo (C) talks to the press in Jakarta on Jan. 10. (Source: thejakartapost.com) Jakarta (VNA) – Bank Indonesia (BI)has vowed to maintain the country’s financial market stability amidexpectations that economic growth will slow due to the spread of the COVID-19outbreak.
BI Governor Perry Warjiyo said that the bank hadbought 130 trillion Rp (over 9 billion USD) worth of government bonds since thebeginning of the year, of which around 110 trillion Rp (7.6 billion USD) wasspent since the spread of the coronavirus in late January.
He was committed to stabilising the rupiah byselling dollars through cash or through domestic non-deliverables forwards.
The central bank recorded a foreign outflow ofabout 31.76 trillion Rp (2.19 billion USD) worth of government bonds and 4.87trillion Rp worth of stocks so far this year as foreign investors flock tosafe-haven assets such as the United States’ 10-year Treasury.
Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19, BI nowexpected the country’s economic growth to be lower than initial projection.
“We saw a V-shaped effect last month with abaseline rate of 5.1 percent of growth and could further reach 5.2 percent withfiscal stimulus but now we need to recalculate it,” Perry said, adding that thecentral bank would reassess its projection during this month’s policy meeting.
During the BI’s governor meeting in February,the central bank projected Indonesia’s economy to grow between 5 percent and5.4 percent this year amid the virus risk.
However, Perry said recently heexpected the gross domestic product (GDP) to expand by just 4.9 percent in thefirst quarter, slower than the three-year-low 4.97 percent recorded in 2019’slast quarter.
On March 2, BI also announced measures tostabilise the rupiah exchange rate, including by cutting banks’ dollar reserveratio as from March 16 to free up billions of dollars to support the rupiah./.
VNA
