Purbaya expects economic growth to come in at 6% this year and accelerate to 6.5% in 2027
Published Tue, Feb 3, 2026 · 05:07 PM
[JAKARTA] Indonesian Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa said a warning about corporate transparency from MSCI last week, which triggered a slump in local stocks, represents an opportunity for an economy which he defended as fundamentally robust.
He also defended the recent appointment of a nephew of President Prabowo Subianto to Bank Indonesia, arguing the appointee is qualified. But he said the central bank should remain independent, with the government trying not to affect monetary policy.
The MSCI warning “is a good thing,” Purbaya said in an interview with Bloomberg TVs Haslinda Amin in a business forum on Tuesday (Feb 3) in Jakarta. He said last week’s market decline – driven both by the central bank appointment and by comments from MSCI – represented jitters in the market, not a meltdown. Purbaya joked that once investors realise he is in charge, sentiment will pick up.
“If we improve the transparency, we will remove the disease in our market, which at the end will help improve our economic condition,” Purbaya said at the Indonesia Economic Summit. He said MSCI had highlighted a longstanding problem that hadn’t been addressed by previous governments.
MSCI last week warned that long-standing investability concerns could result in the emerging market being downgraded to frontier status if reforms are not delivered by May. The warning triggered a sharp sell-off that briefly erased tens of billions of US dollars in market value, forced trading halts and prompted heavy foreign selling.
Purbaya, who became finance minister in September, alluded to the widespread cost-of-living protests in August that led to the ouster of his predecessor, the widely respected Sri Mulyani Indrawati. Prior to his appointment, the economy had been slowing down, leading Prabowo to ask him to become finance minister, he said.
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The economy is now recovering and will become “stronger and stronger”, he said, underlining that while the government has increased spending, it has maintained fiscal prudence by not allowing a deficit of more than 3 per cent of gross domestic product.
Purbaya expects economic growth to come in at 6 per cent this year and accelerate to 6.5 per cent in 2027. BLOOMBERG
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