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Indonesia's foreign debt swells 4% to $422.6 bln in Feb - ANT

Indonesia’s foreign debt reached US$422.6 billion in February, an increase of 4 percent year-on-year (yoy), Bank Indonesia (BI) reported.

In comparison, the nation’s foreign debt showed a growth of 2.7 percent yoythe previous month, the central bank said.chief of BI’s communication department, Erwin Haryono, said on Friday that The debt growth was fueled by the government’s and private institutions’ foreign debts. The government’s foreign debt grew 4.6 percent (yoy) in February this year against 2.8 percent (yoy) in January on the back of efforts to handle the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and accelerate the national vaccination program and social protection in the first quarter of 2021, he explained.

The foreign debt rose to meet the financing target set in the 2021 State Budget, met through domestic and foreign funding by prioritizing medium- and long-term debt and active debt portfolio management to control costs and risks, he said.

The debt was also used to support the priority budget in the government administrative, defense, and compulsory social security sector (which accounted for 17.7 percent of the total funding), the health service and social activity sector (17.2 percent), the educational service sector (6.3 percent), the construction sector (15.3 percent), and the financial service and insurance sector (12.7 percent), Haryono informed//ANT