Indonesian economy 'resilient'
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Indonesia will benefit from strong investment and domestic consumption that will continue to drive growth next year, the UOB Group says.
In its recently released economic outlook, the Singapore-based bank said that Indonesia’s economy, the largest in Southeast Asia, would continue to be resilient, expanding by 6.3 per cent in 2013, slightly lower than the government’s target of 6.8 per cent.
“As the world’s economy is slowing down, our forecast is a bit more moderate. We see that domestic consumption and investment remain the forces behind growth next year,” UOB Group head of research and investor relations Jimmy Koh said after a presentation in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Indonesia’s economy grew by 6.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2012 and 6.4 per cent in the second quarter. The bank estimated that the nation’s economic growth rate would slow to between 6 per cent and 5.8 per cent in the last quarter of 2012 due to the prolonged worldwide slowdown.
In the January to September period, Indonesia booked 229.9 trillion rupiah (Bt720 billion) in realised investments, up 7.02 per cent from 181 trillion rupiah last year, and inched closer to its annual target of 283.5 trillion rupiah.
UOB did not see major risks posed by trade to Indonesia. Unlike other Asian nations, Indonesia has relied more on intra-regional trade and has cut its dependency on traditional key buyers such as the US and the nations of the European Union, Koh said.
Asian markets accounted for 56.5 per cent of the nation’s exports in 2011, up from 53.9 per cent in 2000, while the share of its exports to the US plunged to 8.1 per cent from 13.6 per cent and the share of its exports to EU nations dropped to 9.3 per cent from 14.3 per cent.
