JAKARTA, Nov 30 (Bloomberg): Indonesia’s central bank bought 58 trillion rupiah (US$4 billion) of government bonds, the first transaction in its latest round of debt monetisation.
Bank Indonesia purchased 14.5 trillion rupiah each of four series of notes due in five to eight years via a private placement, the finance ministry’s debt management office said on Tuesday.
Future bond-buying by the central bank will be done gradually, in line with the government’s need to fund its pandemic stimulus, the office said in a statement Tuesday.
Bank Indonesia plans to buy about 215 trillion rupiah of government bonds this year and 224 trillion rupiah in 2022 under its latest round of "burden sharing” arrangement to help finance the state budget.
That’s even as the government plans to use its spare cash to buy its own bonds from the market after canceling the rest of its bond auctions this year.
The situation in Indonesia has been big turnaround ever since the Covid-19 cases have been going down over the last few weeks.
Indonesia on Monday confirmed 176 new Covid-19 cases, raising its tally of infections to 4,256,112, according to the country's Health Ministry.
The ministry reported that the death toll from the virus in the country rose by 11 to 143,819, while 419 more people recovered during the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of recoveries to 4,104,333.
Indonesia started mass Covid-19 vaccinations on Jan. 13 after the authorities approved the emergency use of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.
More than 138.90 million people have received their first doses of vaccines, while over 94.75 million have taken the second doses.
Indonesia has so far administered over 234.88 million doses, including the third booster jabs. The Indonesian government aims to vaccinate 208.2 million people in the country
