1st Quarter Growth Estimated to Exceed 5%: Finance Minister

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian economy is projected to have grown above 5 percent in the first quarter of 2016 fueled by domestic consumption, Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said.

"Let us see it later. Hopefully, it will exceed 5 percent. The cause is government consumption and spending," he said on Wednesday.

Investment had not contributed to the first-quarter growth, the minister believed.

"If the GDP (national gross domestic product) is 5 percent, then consumption must grow above 5 percent," he said.

The global economy is moving toward a state of slowdown, Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Darmin Nasution said earlier. However, the government is making every effort to maintain public consumption and encourage investment to ensure that the national economy will remain stable.

The economic growth in the first quarter of 2016 will reach between 5.1 and 5.2 percent, higher than that of the previous quarter due to infrastructure development since early this year, he predicted.

"In general, it must be better than that of the previous quarter. Maybe, it will not be as high as we have imagined. However, investment and infrastructure development will contribute better to the economy," he said.

The economic growth in the past couple of quarters has tended to improve, reaching 4.73 percent in the third quarter of 2015 and 5.04 percent in the fourth quarter of the same year, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) has stated.

Although the Indonesian economy has not grown as per its potential, it expanded 4.79 percent, higher than the average economic growth of developed and developing nations, he said.

In the revision of the draft 2016 state budget, the government has set the assumed macroeconomic growth for 2016 at 5.3 percent, fueled by high household consumption and investment performance.

ANTARA