REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA - Setting the target for economic growth in 2014 at 5.1-5.5 percent is still relevant, although there was a slowdown in the economy during the first and second quarters, according to Bank Indonesia. 

"BI views that the 5.1-5.5 percent assumptions are still relevant. We are still maintaining the growth target," BI's Head of Communications Department Group, Peter Jacobs, noted in a discussion with journalists on Wednesday.

The economic growth in the second quarter of 2014 stood at 5.12 percent year-on-year, a slowdown as compared to 5.22 percent year-on-year recorded in the first quarter. "We hope that there will be strengthening of economic growth components in the third and fourth quarters, and thus, the overall economy will grow well," he pointed out.

Potential risk of slowing down

In the meantime, Chief Economic Minister Chairul Tanjung remarked that Indonesia's realistic economic growth this year is between 5.2 and 5.5 percent.

"We hope to achieve 5.5 percent economic growth. Our conservative figures of 5.2-5.5 percent will be more realistic if the global trend is observed," the coordinating minister of economic affairs stated on Tuesday.

Chairul explained that the global economy had been undergoing a consolidation, where the economies of developed countries had been improving, while those of the developing countries such as Indonesia had the potential risk of slowing down.

The Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) has recorded that during the second quarter of 2014, Indonesia's year-on-year economic growth was 5.12 percent. On the cumulative basis, Indonesia's economic growth in the first quarter of 2014 stood at 5.17 percent as compared to that in the first quarter of 2013.

The government has set an economic growth assumption of 5.5 percent in the revised 2014 State Budget, down from that set in the previous state budget at 6.0 percent.

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