Trade Minister: Barter Trade Helps Reduce US Dollar Demand

Trade Minister Budi Santoso has said that countertrade or barter schemes are one of the government’s strategies to reduce the need for US dollars and suppress the weakening trend of the rupiah against the greenback. He mentioned that the government is beginning to encourage countertrade cooperation with several countries, one of which is the Philippines. “One of the reasons is so that we do not spend too many US dollars; we have already been doing this through barter,” Budi said after a Limited Coordination Meeting on Food Commodity Price Developments in Jakarta on Tuesday. According to him, Indonesia and the Philippines have explored bartering abaca commodities for textiles and iron ore for steel. Budi explained that the countertrade scheme is expected to help reduce the need for foreign exchange for imports because transactions are carried out through commodity exchanges. “We hope there will be other products later. This is one way for us to reduce the need for US dollars, because countertrade can help with that,” he said. In addition to promoting countertrade, the government is also continuing to monitor the prices of imported goods amidst the weakening of the rupiah.