JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian authorities are making efforts to prevent an economic recession due to the coronavirus outbreak, but their worst case scenario is for contraction in two consecutive quarters beginning this April-June, the country’s finance minister said.
Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Tuesday her worst case scenario, assuming a prolonged outbreak, is for gross domestic product to shrink by as much as 2% in the second quarter, followed by another contraction in the third quarter.
“Two times of contraction and we will enter a recession. We strive for this not to happen,” she told an online news conference.
Indrawati previously said her baseline scenario is for 2020 GDP growth of 2.3%.
(Reporting by Maikel Jefriando; Writing by Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
