China's Imports to Indonesia Plummet on Corona Impact

JAKARTA.  Corona virus outbreak or known as Covid-19 already has an impact on economic activity in Indonesia.  The spread of this deadly virus is enough to affect the performance of Indonesia's export-import to China.  The Directorate General of Customs and Excise of the Ministry of Finance, Syarif Hidayat ensures a drastic reduction in Indonesia's foreign exchange imports due to Covid-19. 

Director of International Customs and Interagency Directorate General of Customs and Excise Syarif Hidayat explained, the value of foreign exchange imports from China as of 28 February, 2020 only reached USD 463 million.  The foreign exchange import dropped around 50 percent, around USD 485 million, compared to the last week of the previous month which was USD 948 million. 

"We can see the impact of this corona has been seen, with a decline in imports from China," said Syarif. 

Syarif said, the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak caused a change in the trend of imports from China, specifically in the period from January to March 2020.  In general, imports to China and several other major trading partners, such as Japan, South Korea, the United States, Thailand and Singapore, indeed tended to decline at the end of December due to the Christmas and New Year holidays.  Import performance will also remain low during Chinese New Year celebrations. 

However, two weeks after the Chinese New Year celebration, import performance will rebound.  This can be seen as the imports from the five main trading partner countries are starting to increase, except China.  During the Chinese New Year, imports from the five countries only reached USD 994 million, lower than the initial position in 2020 of USD 1.24 billion. Though, import performance from these countries rose to USD 1.16 billion on February 28, 2020. 

While imports from China continue to show a decline.  This is the impact of the enactment of a flight ban on flights to and from China in early February, as an effort by the government to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus. The slump in imports from China occurred in almost all types of goods. Yet, the most significant are machine tools, computers, textiles, and telephones. 

"It should be two weeks after the Chinese New Year has gone up (imports). But the reality, imports from China are still dropping. So the impact of the corona virus is already visible," he added. (Ken)