Indonesia’s 2009 Economic Growth Recorded At 4.5 Pct

The Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) said Indonesia’s economic growth in 2009 was recorded at 4.5 percent, down from 6.1 percent in 2008.

“According to our computations, gross domestic product growth reached 4.5 percent in 2009,” BPS deputy chief for analysis and statistics affairs Slamet Sutomo said here on Wednesday.

The decline in the country’s economic growth was caused by the global financial crisis which lasted from late 2008 to mid 2009, he said.

“Indonesia’s exports continued to drop since then,” he added.

Luckily the economic downturn did not reduce Indonesia’s economic growth to negative, in fact it could even grow by 4.5 percent.

Indonesia’s gross domestic product based on prices in the market in 2009 rose to Rp5,613.4 trillion from Rp4,951.4 trillion in 2008.

Economic growth began to improve in the third quarter of 2009 and continued to improve in the fourth quarter.

“The economy experienced fast growth in the fourth quarter in line with improved world economic conditions,” he said.

He said although exports and imports stood at minus 9.7 percent and 15 percent respectively, they recorded positive growth at 3.7 percent and 1.6 percent respectively in the fourth quarter.

Household consumption went down but still played a dominant role in the grass domestic product. In 2009 household consumption grew 58.6 percent of the GDP with a rate of growth at 4.9 percent.

“This contributed 2.8 percent to the 4.5 percent growth,” he said

In the meantime government consumption also increased 15.7 percent in 2009 that contributed 1.3 percent to economic growth of 4.5 percent.

He said that sectors contributing to the economic growth included transportation and communications which grew 15.5 percent and contributed 1.2 percent, electricity and clean water (13.8 percent contributing 0.1 percent), construction (7.1 percent contributing 0.4 percent, services (6.4 percent/ 0.6 percent), finance, real estate and firm services (5.0 percent/ 0.5 percent), agriculture, husbandry, forestry and fishery (4.1 percent / 0.6 percent), processing industry (2.1 percent/ 0.6 percent) and trade, hotel and restaurant (1.1 percent / 0.2 percent).

Source : Antara