Finance Minister: Lowered Fuel Prices Reduces Inflation
1 February 2015 00:56 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Minister of Finance Bambang Brodjonegoro predicted that inflation in January 2015 would be far lower than the average inflation in January in the previous year.
He estimated that inflation this month would be around 0.1 to 0.2 percent.
"Because the price of fuel drops this month, inflation would be very low accordingly,” he said in Jakarta.
According to Bambang, Indonesia is left behind form other South East Asian countries in terms of the percentage of inflation.
He cited Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines as the examples and said that those countries have lower inflation than Indonesia does. The Philippines, for example, its annual inflation is only 2 to 3 percent because there are no issues of fuel price increases.
Bambang also said that in countries where there are no fuel subsidies, there will be no significant rise of prices that contribute to inflation.
Indonesia, he said, has a high inflation because of the increase in prices affected by the allocation of fuel subsidy.
ALI HIDAYAT