Ilustrasi: Some staff prepare cash at the Bank Mandiri Cash Center in Jakarta to be sent to branch offices and ATMs.
The government, as well as the nation’s financial and monetary authorities, has repeatedly expressed optimism that economic growth will be better in 2019.
The economy is targeted to grow 5.3 percent and the current account deficit is projected to drop to 2.5 percent. Various efforts to encourage economic growth have been made, such as offering assistance to increase the purchasing power for middle-low income groups and tax holidays for foreign investment companies. Bank Indonesia (BI) is maintaining low inflation and the rupiah exchange rate stable.
The Financial Services Authority (OJK) is helping to drive growth through synergizing with the government and BI in facilitating the local economy, including providing loans to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), easing car and first-home loans, as well as encouraging the tourism sector.
Amid this optimism, Vice President Jusuf Kalla urged stakeholders at the 2019annual financial services industry meeting last weekend to keep in mind the importance of cooperation and collaboration in the financial industry to reach the 2019 target.
Our economic growth target is to be met by increasing productivity in goods and services. We are urged to increase competitiveness to support growth, including competitiveness in the financial industry. One such indicator is credit services, as measured by the interest rate for the loan, the speed of disbursement and ensuring repayment of loans.
This seems easy enough to say but requires coordination and cooperation among government agencies, the financial industry, the real sector and society in practice.
We often question why the interest rates at our banks are higher than those in other countries. Kalla pointed out that local interest rates on loans for small and medium businesses were higher than the interest rates for large companies for a number of reasons. In the past 20 years, the state has covered the bad debts of large companies.
We have made progress in supervising the financial industry so that it has become healthier. Nevertheless, we should not become complacent, even though national banking has been able to restructure bad loans.
Despite starting the year full of optimism, we must remain vigilant amid the foreign capital that has begun to flow back into the country.
Collaboration between government, industry players and the public must be mutually beneficial. We hope that the nation’s financial authorities can stimulate public fundraising to finance economic growth because we must still tackle the large current account deficit and trade deficit.
