Govt plans to issue third package of measures

JAKARTA. The government plans to introduce a third package of economic measures to improve the country's current account, Coordinating Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa has said.

"We are preparing a third package of measures. Hopefully, it will be completed this quarter," he said in Jakarta on Wednesday, as quoted by Antara news agency.

The third package of measures was designed to attract foreign investors to reinvest their profits in the country instead of bringing them back home, he said.

"If the profits are reinvested in Indonesia, the [the current account] deficit will decrease," he said.

Hatta said the government would also continue its oil-to-gas conversion program to reduce oil and gas imports, which have contributed a lot to the country's trade deficit.

"Oil and gas imports will soar if we do not control them by accelerating the oil-to-gas conversion program. Apart from that, we have to increase exports. We are serious about controlling the current-account deficit because we want to keep it below 2 percent," he said.

The government introduced the first package of economic measures in late August 2013.

The first package was aimed at curbing the widening current-account deficit, stabilizing the rupiah's exchange rate, maintaining high economic growth, improving people's purchasing power and keeping the inflation rate in check.

Later in December 2013, the government introduced a second package of economic policies to reduce the import of consumer goods and encourage exports.

The two packages helped lower the country's current-account deficit to 3.2 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP) in late 2013 from 4.4 percent in the second quarter of 2013.