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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