To Chase 8% Economic Target, Purbaya: We're Borrowing a Bit of BI's Duties

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa acknowledged the pessimistic outlook regarding the government’s ability to realise 8% economic growth, amid the ongoing heavy pressures on the state budget (APBN) in facing global economic turbulence.

The APBN, he said, will continue to be made efficient to keep the deficit from breaching the safe limit set in the State Finance Law, namely 3% of gross domestic product (GDP). Despite the large state expenditure needs to implement President Prabowo Subianto’s priority programmes in pursuit of the 8% growth target.

To that end, he stated that the government’s approach to driving growth without overly burdening the APBN is by creating conditions where liquidity in the real sector is maintained, so the economy moves through the engine of the private sector.

“You must be wondering, if fiscal is frugal, how can it grow faster? Because we will ensure the real sector grows. How? We will ensure there is sufficient liquidity in our economic system,” Purbaya said at the PT SMI 2026 Symposium in Jakarta on Wednesday (22/4/2026).

Purbaya also admitted that this method is actually the central bank’s responsibility, as it relates to the circulation of money in the banking system. However, in his view, there’s no harm in fiscal authorities contributing to creating money circulation in the real sector without having to resort to large state expenditures.

“Actually, this is the central bank’s task, BI’s duty, so we’ll sneakily borrow a little bit. The important thing is that the economy grows faster going forward,” Purbaya revealed.

In addition to maintaining liquidity in the financial system, Purbaya emphasised that the government will recommit to resolving the issue of high logistics costs. Because, Purbaya said, logistics is part of the vital channel for economic movement.

“Our problem isn’t that we don’t know the direction, but one of the issues we face is the logistics cost which is currently still around a tenth of GDP. It has dropped a bit, but it’s still higher than in advanced countries,” he explained.

If logistics costs remain very high, he stressed, the prices of goods traded domestically will certainly be much more expensive and uncompetitive compared to imported goods. Therefore, this issue, he said, will once again be the government’s focus to resolve, as it was a decade ago.

“That means our goods are expensive, competitiveness declines. If maybe 10-15 years ago we always talked about reducing logistics costs, but in the last 10 years we haven’t talked about it like that,” Purbaya said.

“We thought everything was already good, but it turns out not. Well, we were just lazy to think about it, we looked for other more exciting topics. But we won’t forget it, we will fix it again,” he asserted.

According to Purbaya, efforts to lower logistics costs are actually also part of the main duties of the Ministry of Finance through the Directorate General of Customs and Excise, since high business costs at ports are still elevated.

“Primarily, logistics costs are also at the ports, which are under the Ministry of Finance, we will improve them,” Purbaya stated.