Jakarta, The Indonesia Post – Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto said the government is currently focusing on reducing inflation from volatile food prices from the current level of 11 percent.
“We hope that this figure from yesterday’s volatile food, which is above 11 percent, can drop even lower,” said Airlangga when met after the 2022 National Coordination Meeting for Inflation Control at the State Palace, Jakarta, Thursday.
According to Airlangga, the prices of several goods including volatile foods such as rice, sugar, chili, shallots and cooking oil have decreased.
“Nowadays, some volatile foods have started to decline, whether it’s rice, then sugar, chili, shallots, then cooking oil, all of these have gone down,” he said.
In addition to food commodities, Airlangga said the government will also try to maintain inflationary pressure from energy commodities which are affected by supply chain pressures in the global market.
“The government is still holding back the economic price of fuel oil (BBM) with fiscal cushion. So the state budget is a shock absorber for the increase in fuel prices which amounted to more than Rp500 trillion,” said Airlangga.
The government, said Airlangga, will keep inflation at a controlled level until the end of the year even though global economic uncertainty is still looming. This is so that people’s purchasing power is maintained during the economic recovery period after the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Airlangga projects that inflation in 2022 will be in the range of 4 percent to 4.8 percent (year on year/yoy). (mhn/bbs)
Comment