RI posts strong GDP growth on better trade balance
An improved trade balance has helped Indonesia achieve strong gross domestic product growth in the third quarter, even as consumer spending and business investment slowed down from the preceding three months.
Indonesia's economy expanded by 5.47 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, marking robust growth even as consumer spending and business investment decelerated, according to Statistics Indonesia (BPS). This growth rate, the highest since forecasts were issued, surpassed expectations and marked a considerable improvement from the 5.29 percent recorded in the preceding second quarter. The cumulative growth rate for the first nine months of the year stood at 5.45 percent.
BPS official Edy Mahmud explained that the growth was bolstered by the fact that "Indonesia’s main trading partners were still growing amid global uncertainty," citing China, the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and South Korea as examples. However, Indonesia had transitioned from consecutive trade surpluses to recording a deficit earlier in the year due to a spike in oil prices following the US and Israel's 2020 strikes against Iran in February.
While Indonesia's net exports, calculated as exports minus imports, have historically dampened GDP growth, their impact in the third quarter was comparatively minor. Edy revealed that in the third quarter, net exports contributed to a slowdown of only 0.28 percentage points in overall growth, as opposed to 0.9 and 1.01 percentage points reductions in the second and first quarters, respectively.
Written by urgent.news from The Jakarta Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
