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IMF lowers Indonesia's GDP growth forecast for 2021
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded this year's economic growth forecast for Indonesia by 0.4 percentage points to 3.9 percent.
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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters building is seen ahead of the IMF/World Bank spring meetings in Washington, DC, on April 8, 2019. (Reuters/Yuri Gripas)
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he International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised down this year’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast for Indonesia to 3.9 percent as the country grapples with the Delta COVID-19 variant outbreak amid a low vaccination rate.
The revision is 0.4 percentage points lower than the growth forecast outlined in the IMF’s April outlook. The downward revision is in line with that of the government, which downgraded its GDP growth forecast to between 3.7 and 4.5 percent from between 4.5 and 5.3 percent for this year.
“The COVID-19 pandemic poses very great uncertainty about the economy. We need to be extremely careful and keep maintaining compliance with health protocols. We have also come to learn that vaccination acceleration is one of the keys to controlling cases,” Indonesian Fiscal Policy Agency (BKF) head Febrio Kacaribu was quoted in a news release as saying on Wednesday.
Daily new confirmed coronavirus cases swelled to more than 50,000 in mid-July, but have shown signs of falling since. Daily new confirmed deaths remain on the rise, breaking another record at 2,069 on Tuesday.
Read also: Death haunts self-isolating patients as COVID-19 tsunami engulfs Indonesia
The recent pandemic wave, driven largely by the Delta variant, is expected to disrupt the country’s economic recovery, which had shown progress, as reflected in the smaller annual GDP contraction of 0.74 percent in the first quarter.
