Economists, Currency Analysts and Researchers See BI Rate Rising Today
JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - Economists, currency analysts and researchers are unanimously forecasting that Bank Indonesia (BI) will raise its benchmark rate (the BI Rate) by 25 basis points (bps) to 5 percent at the BI Board of Governors meeting in May 2026.
Head of Macroeconomics and Market Research at PermataBank’s PIER, Faisal Rachman, said the room for a BI Rate rise in 2026 has opened further due to the rupiah’s weakness. ‘So our projection is that there will be a 25 basis point increase in the first half of the year, so it could be in May or June that the BI Rate is raised to 5 percent,’ he said during the PIER Economic Review media briefing on Tuesday 12 May 2026. Faisal noted that, historically, central banks tend to start lifting rates when rupiah depreciation has exceeded 3%. At present, the rupiah has weakened by more than 4%.
In Tuesday trading (19 May 2026), the rupiah closed weaker by 38 points or 0.22 percent at Rp 17,706 per US dollar.
Additionally, BI’s efforts to stabilise the rupiah through rising yields on Indonesian Rupiah Securities (SRBI) are considered to be already at maximum. For information, BI raised the SRBI yield on 13 May 2026 to 6.4 percent. This level increased by 51 basis points since mid-April and by 150 basis points since the start of 2026.
‘So we do indeed need to anticipate. But the risk of the third factor remains, and we see that the possibility of the BI raising the policy rate to 5 percent is open at the moment,’ he said.
A similar view was expressed by Lukman Leong, a currency analyst at Doo Financial Futures. Lukman expects BI to raise the BI Rate by 25 bps at the BI RDG in May 2026. He cited rupiah weakness reflecting negative market sentiment toward the government’s and BI’s response to exchange-rate pressures. ‘(BI Rate will rise) 25 bps. The rupiah weakness reflects weak sentiment, with investors believing the government and BI are not acting quickly enough and considering early problems as trivial,’ Lukman told Kompas.com on Tuesday.