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Jokowi asks Trade Ministry to develop app to monitor prices
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A vendor piles red chilies at his kiosk in the Idi Rayeuk Market in East Aceh, Aceh. (Antara/Syifa Yulinnas)
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has asked the Trade Ministry to develop an online app that can be used to monitor prices.
He emphasized the importance of monitoring food prices and the price of goods in real-time in order to control prices and prevent inflation.
“Creating an app nowadays is very easy and no longer costs billions [of rupiah]. An app that costs merely millions [of rupiah] can inform us of [prices] in markets,” he said during the opening of the Trade Ministry’s 2017 Work Meeting at the State Palace in Jakarta on Tuesday.
“If we have such a system, we can see fluctuations two to three months beforehand. We can predict and anticipate them as the stocks are connected to price stability.”
(Read also: Price intervention: Cutting corners until there's nothing left to cut)
Although Jokowi said he was pleased with last year’s inflation of 3.02 percent, he warned that inflation could rise beyond the 3.5 percent limit if the government was not careful.
“My target is to keep [inflation] in check because the inflation of many stable countries, such as those in Europe, could be zero. We used to have inflation rates of around 8 percent or 9 percent, or even more,” he said.
Indonesia recorded an inflation rate of 3.02 percent in 2016, lower than the 3.35 percent recorded in 2015. According to the Central Statistics Agency, this was due largely to relatively stable prices.
The monthly inflation rate last December stood at 0.42 percent, the lowest figure since 2010. (bbn)
