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Slow growth in bank loans likely next year: Economist
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Charles Buntoro, Bank Central Asia's (BCA) assistant officer of funding and services development, speaks about the progress of Sakuku e-money app on Wednesday in Jakarta. The one-year-old app is still focusing on raising awareness as many people are still not familiar it. (JP/ Winny Tang) (JP/Winny Tang)
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rowth in bank loans in Indonesian will remain low next year, partly because of global uncertainty over US-president elect Donald Trump’s planned economic policies and declining attractiveness of the country’s tax amnesty.
Bank Central Asia (BCA) chief economist David Sumual has forecast that loan growth will be lower than the 12 to 14 percent target set by the Financial Services Authority (OJK).
“I am more conservative; I predict that loan growth will stand at 10 percent,” he said during a BCA media briefing in Jakarta on Wednesday.
He explained that if Trump’s realized his campaign promises to tear up international trade deals and encourage protectionism, it would result in a stronger US economy and higher inflation. Thus, Indonesia’s economy would remain vulnerable.
In addition, he claimed that the government’s tax amnesty had started to lose pace, as could be seen by the current amnesty result being less than government target of Rp 4 quadrillion.
(Read also: BCA targets 300,000 users of Sakuku e-wallet before 2018)
“Revenue collected from penalty fees only amount to around Rp 100 trillion (US$7.5 billion) at present,” he said.
The figure only slightly increased from the Rp 97.2 trillion collected by Sept. 30. (win/dmr)
