Indonesia Daily Focus November 20, 2020

 

Macro Update – November’s policy rate decision: Surprising cut from the central bank
 
BI cuts 7DRRR to 3.75%
The central bank decided to lower the 7-Day Reverse Repo Rate by 25 bps to 3.75%, defying the consensus’ expectation and our own projection that the rate would be maintained at 4%. Besides lowering its policy rate further, BI continues to jack up its ownership of the government bonds as part of its effort to stimulate economic recovery.

Justification from macro data & Rupiah’s performance
Despite projecting BI to retain its policy rate, actually we’ve noted that the macroeconomic data released recently might have provided a strong case for BI to lower the 7DRRR further.

Earlier this month, Statistics Indonesia announced Indonesia’s GDP figure for the third 3 months of 2020 at -3.49% YoY, worse than the median of consensus compiled by Bloomberg at -3.2% YoY. We ourselves expected Indonesia’s GDP figure to drop by 3.1% YoY. Another justification for cutting policy rate further came from the recent stellar appreciation of Rupiah.

Might be bad for Rupiah
We think the latest decision from the central bank might bring a negative impact in the short-medium term on Rupiah; yesterday, Rupiah weakened by 0.6% against the USD.

In December, we believe that BI will maintain its policy rate, as Rupiah could be met by significant selling pressures due to tight liquidity. We expect tight liquidity in December due to the central government’s decision to move the collective leave days for Eid al-Fitr to December, instead of May; thus, Indonesian people will enjoy 6 days of holiday in December 2020, compared to just 3 days in December 2019.

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