Rupiah weakens to 13,518 per dollar

JAKARTA. The rupiah exchange rate traded in Jakarta on Thursday morning weakened by 15 points to Rp 13,518 per US dollar from Rp 13,503.

“Although Indonesia’s gross domestic product [GDP] data for the second quarter of 2015 was better than market estimations, it has not yet been strong enough to support the rupiah exchange rate against the dollar,” said NH Korindo Sekurities Indonesia head of research Reza Priyambada as quoted by Antara in Jakarta on Thursday.

The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported on Wednesday that Indonesia’s GDP growth stood at 4.67 percent in the second quarter of 2015, slowing down slightly compared to the same period last year when growth was 5.03 percent.

However, Reza said, the country’s economic growth was still above the market's expectations for growth between 4.61 and 4.65 percent.

He said the negative impacts of released data on Indonesia’s consumer confidence index (which declined by 1.4 points to 109.9) along with circulating perceptions on the continued slowdown of Indonesia’s economic growth (which was still below 5 percent as of the second quarter of this year) had created negative sentiment around the rupiah.

Bank Mandiri financial market analyst Rully Arya Wisnubroto said market players were still worried about the US Federal Reserve’s plan to increase its interest rate this year and this had become one of the factors that prevented the rupiah from appreciating.

However, the analyst said, the rupiah still has an opportunity to improve following high expectations about the government’s capital spending in the second semester of 2015.

“Government spending has shown some improvements. Improved budget absorption, which was for infrastructure development, among others, is believed to be effective to support Indonesia’s economy in the future. This situation could restore the financial market confidence toward the government,” said Rully.