He said in Jakarta on Tuesday that the construction of infrastructure projects by the government and non-infrastructure projects by the private sector had pushed the import volume up in April because of the increasing need for capital goods and raw materials.

“The imports of capital goods and raw materials [for industry] accounted for about 91 percent, while consumption goods only accounted for about 9 percent,” said Darmin as quoted by kompas.com.

The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) on Tuesday announced that Indonesia recorded a US$1.63 billion trade deficit in April due to the significant increase in imports.

Exports were booked at $14.47 billion, an increase of 9.01 percent year-on-year (yoy), while imports jumped by 34.68 percent yoy in April to $16.09 billion.

Darmin said the 9.01 percent export growth was quite high, although it could not balance out the high import growth.

He admitted that the government needed to boost exports, as imports would continue to grow significantly in the coming months as construction continues on both infrastructure and non-infrastructure projects in the country.

“The government needs to boost exports to balance the increasing growth in imports. The infrastructure development will continue. Like it or not, imports will continue to grow because we have not produced a number of goods needed for the construction projects,” he added. (bbn)

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