Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – The Indonesian central bank, Bank Indonesia (BI) has recorded that the national foreign debts in July 2020 raised slowly by 4.1 percent year on year (yoy) compared to that in the previous month of 5.1 percent (yoy).

The sluggish growth was driven by the declining growth of the private foreign debt amid the relatively stable growth of the government’s foreign debt, BI’s spokesperson Onny Widjanarko said in a statement here on Tuesday.

He noted that Indonesia’s foreign debts by the end of July 2020 were recorded at 409.7 billion U.S. dollars, consisting of the public sector and the private sector amounting to 201.8 billion U.S. dollars and 207.9 billion U.S. dollars respectively.

“This condition was due to the withdrawals of commitments from several multilateral institutions and the issuance of Samurai bonds to meet the financing needs including those for the COVID-19 pandemic mitigation and the national economic recovery program,” he explained.

However, the structure of Indonesia’s foreign debts remained healthy as they were managed prudently with the ratio to the gross domestic product (GDP) reaching 38.2 percent, Onny said.

“The structure of the Indonesian foreign debts remains dominated by the long-term debts with the share of 89.1 percent of the total foreign debts,” he added.

In the effort to maintain the healthy foreign debt structure, Bank Indonesia and the government continue to enhance coordination in monitoring the debt development which is supported by the prudent debt management, he said.

Reporting by Indonesia Window