Real Sector Key to Quick Recovery

KOMPAS/TOTOK WIJAYANTO

A ship docks on Tuesday (22/9/2020) at the container port of Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta. Statistics Indonesia (BPS) records show that exports declined 8.36 percent year-on-year (yoy) in August 2020 from US$14.262 billion in August 2019, while imports nosedived 24.19 percent yoy from US$14.169 billion in August 2019.

JAKARTA, KOMPAS — Economic activities in the real sector should be maintained while coping with the health crisis caused by Covid-19. This emphasis is needed in order to ensure that the economy will emerge from a recession more quickly and then recover gradually.

A recession occurs when the economy contracts for two consecutive quarters. The government is projecting that the economy will grow between minus 1 and 2.9 percent in the third quarter of the year. Although the projected growth is much slower than the second-quarter contraction of 5.32 percent, there are no indications that the economy will soon rise above a negative percentile.