He said the deficit this year was triggered by a deficit in the exports and imports of goods and services and bigger outflows of funds.
"It is because people sold their portfolios, shares and bonds to make the balance of payments suffer a deficit of five to six billion U.S. dollars," he said.
However, with the structural improvement that is now underway, the balance of payments, including the current account and balance of financial transactions would record a surplus like in 2014 when the surplus of US$15 billion was made.
Mirza said the improvement in the balance of payments would complete the positive trend of 2016 following uncertainty caused by the U.S. Federal Reserves (Feds) rate issue and the positive impact of various economic policy packages announced by the government recently.
"Uncertainty over the Feds rate will soon be over, with the current account and inflation improving and the balance of payment being surplus again in 2016 because the governments economic policy packages are indeed extraordinary," he stated.
Mirza signaled that after the balance of payments improve the rate of inflation will be better under control to give the monetary authorities a bigger opportunity to reduce the BI Rate.
Referring to Bank Indonesias data until the third quarter of this year, the current account in the balance of payments recorded a deficit of US$4 billion.
The balance of financial transactions, despite a surplus of US$1.2 billion, is an achievement and far down from the second quarter of 2015, during which it was US$2.2 billion and in the third quarter of 2014, when it was US$14.7 billion.
The drop in the surplus also happened because of a deficit in the portfolio investment and a decline in the surplus of direct investment.
"The surplus cannot fully cover the current account deficit to make the overall balance of NPI (Indonesia Balance of Payment) in the third quarter of 2015 suffer a deficit of US$4.6 billion," according to a BI report issued on November 13. (*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2015
