Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian economic growth next year will decline from the target of 6.5 percent for 2011 but will stay at a high level of 6.2 percent on strong domestic consumption, Bank Mandiri chief economist predicted.

To maintain high economic growth the government should increase public income, keep down inflation to increase the people`s purchasing power, create more jobs to reduce unemployment rate and ensure the supply of goods, Destry Damayanti said here on Wednesday.

"The government is also expected to continue to encourage infrastructure development to increase economic capacity and national efficiency, create political stability, and maintain competitive interest rates," she said.

In addition, she said the government should continue its prudent macro economic policies to maintain macro economic stability.

"BI (Bank Indonesia) continues to ease its monetary policy to boost the domestic economy. It also has cut its benchmark interest rate called BI Rate by 75 basis points in the past couple of months to an all time low of 6 percent," she said.

The country`s foreign exchange reserves which currently reached US$111 billion were still safe although the figure fell from US$125 billion in August, she said.

She said the country`s fiscal position in which the ratio of debts to gross domestic product (GDP) reached 25 percent and the budget deficit stood at 1.5 percent of GDP was also safe.

The banking sector was also still safe, with the capital adequacy ratio (CAR) reaching 17 percent,non-performing loans (NPLs) less than 3 percent, loan-to deposit ratio 80 percent and ccredit growth 24 percent, she said.(*)
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Editor: Jafar M Sidik
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