The International Monetary Fund has revised down its economic growth forecast for Indonesia to 5.6 percent this year and 6 percent in 2023.
he International Monetary Fund has revised down its forecast for Indonesia’s economic growth amid a rising number of COVID-19 infections driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
Indonesia’s GDP is now expected to expand by 5.6 percent this year and 6 percent in 2023, according to the IMF’s January outlook released on Tuesday. The latest forecast marks a downward revision from the October outlook by 0.3 percentage points for this year and 0.4 percentage points for 2023.
“By including the spread of the Omicron variant, which could lead to renewed mobility restrictions, we also then adjusted the growth projections from [those published in] October,” Cheng Hoon Lim, the Indonesian mission chief at the IMF’s Asia-Pacific department, said in a press briefing on Wednesday.
The government has so far refrained from tightening activity curbs in Jakarta despite a recent increase in the case toll and in COVID-19 bed occupancy rates. Bed occupancy in the capital city, which the government called “the first battleground”, rose to 32 percent on Monday from 8 percent on Jan. 3.
Read also: Jakarta virus curbs remain unchanged amid case spike
Indonesia’s downward revision for GDP growth is in line with a worldwide trend as the IMF reduced its forecast for global growth for this year by 0.5 percentage points to 4.4 percent.
After the solid recovery last year, when the global economy grew an estimated 5.9 percent, the IMF cut projections for nearly every country -- with India a notable exception -- but it was the downgrades to the United States and China that had the biggest impact, news agency AFP reported on Wednesday.
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