Dollar Reaches Rp18,000: Businesses Implement Efficiency Measures and Halt New Hiring
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - The Rupiah’s exchange rate against the dollar has fallen to Rp18,000/US$, during morning trading today, Thursday (4/6/2026). Businesses are starting to take steps to improve efficiency and temporarily stop recruiting new employees.
Shinta explained that the business world has been facing gradual exchange rate pressures in recent months, and the impact on the real sector is becoming increasingly felt. In response to this situation, according to Shinta, the business world is taking several mitigation steps.
“Many companies are choosing to improve operational efficiency, implement hiring freezes, control non-essential costs, postpone expansion and new investments, diversify markets, and strengthen the use of local raw materials and hedging strategies to manage exchange rate risks,” said Shinta, via a short message, Thursday (4/6/2026).
She explained that the current challenge for businesses lies in the impact on production costs, financing, and business certainty. Given that the dependence on imported raw materials is still around 80%.
“The weakening of the Rupiah directly increases the cost of goods sold, narrows business margins, and reduces the space for companies to expand,” she said.
This pressure is occurring in the textile, chemical, and petrochemical, plastics, basic metals, electronics, automotive sectors, and various other sectors that still rely on imported components in their production chains.
In addition, this situation is also becoming more difficult because businesses are still facing relatively high logistics costs, energy costs, and financing costs. This makes businesses face layered or externally driven cost pressures that are quite significant.
On the other hand, according to Shinta, business activity has also shown a decline in optimism. Manufacturing PMI data has returned to the contraction zone since July 2025, and the downward trend in industrial confidence indices indicates that the real sector is facing a challenging phase.
“Moreover, the current weakening of the Rupiah is much deeper than the position in the first quarter of this year, when some (10 subsectors) of manufacturing grew below the average national economic growth, and 4 manufacturing subsectors experienced a contraction,” she said.
Citing Refinitiv data, the Rupiah in the spot market at 09.11 WIB was recorded to have broken the psychological level of Rp18,000/US$ for the first time. The Garuda currency was at Rp18,015/US$ or weakened 0.42%.
This weakening occurred quite quickly. The Rupiah first closed trading above the psychological level of Rp17,000/US$ on April 6, 2026. This means that in just 59 calendar days, the Rupiah has depreciated by around Rp1,000/US$ to reach Rp18,000.