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Govt abruptly pushes back trade data release
The government has postponed the release of monthly trade for April, which should have revealed the impact of new US import tariffs on Indonesian exports, mere hours before it was supposed to be published.
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Statistics Indonesia (BPS) staff work in a call center room for the 2020 population census in Jakarta in February 2020. (JP/Seto Wardhana)
T
he government postponed the release of April’s trade data, which would have unveiled the impact of new United States import tariffs on Indonesian exports, just hours before it was supposed to be published.
Statistics Indonesia (BPS) announced on Wednesday evening that the April trade data release scheduled for Thursday morning had been pushed back to the first work day of June.
The report was eagerly awaited as April marks the first month of new tariffs imposed by the US on almost all countries, with a particularly steep rate placed on US imports from China, Indonesia’s largest trade partner.
Not only do the tariffs impact Indonesian exports to the US, but presumably also those to China, because of weaker US demand for Chinese products and hence weaker Chinese demand for Indonesian materials.
BPS spokesperson Melly Merlianasari denied that the postponement was related to those global developments and said the decision was based on an “internal evaluation” to “improve the data quality”.
The agency normally releases trade data on the 15th of the month following the reporting period, or soon thereafter if the 15th is a holiday, but Melly told The Jakarta Post on Thursday that the data would from now on be published on the first working day of the next month, or approximately four to five weeks after the end of the reporting month.
Melly explained that the reports that had been published in the middle of the month had been based on preliminary data, as the final figures require more processing. With the new arrangement, she argued, BPS could provide final, “more consistent data” in the monthly release.
