Berliana Nainggolan, 29, plans to purchase winter clothing for her next trip to Japan next January.

“There’s sure to be many big sales everywhere during the year-end. That makes me happy,” she said.

A regular traveler, the manager of a four-star hotel in Ancol, Jakarta, just returned from a trip to Banyuwangi, East Java, and plans to make a leisure visit to Surakarta, Central Java, this month.

Berliana is one of the increasing number of Indonesians for whom travel has become a necessity, and as the year-end holiday season approaches, that could potentially drive inflation up, which Bank Indonesia (BI) and the government aim to keep at 5 percent at a maximum until the end of this year.

Nevertheless, consumer prices already rose 0.13 percent in September, driven by recreational activities (0.46 percent), along with educational expenditure at the start of the new school year (1.48 percent) and sports activities (0.05 percent). When combined, these three components recorded the highest inflation of 1.03 percent in the month, according to data released by the Central Sta- tistics Agency (BPS) on Monday.

The country saw a deflation of 0.07 percent in August.

The September figure brought the inflation rate to 3.72 percent year-on-year (yoy) and 2.66 percent year-to-date (ytd).

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