KONTAN.CO.ID - JAKARTA. Indonesia is among the top five ASEAN countries that are expected to surpass 5 percent economic growth this year amid the projected slight recovery in the global economic condition, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said in its latest report, published Tuesday.

In the fall edition of its World Economic Outlook (WEO), which was  published on Oct. 10, the IMF projected that growth in the ASEAN-5 economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam were expected to reach 5.2 percent at year-end, higher than the 5 percent projected in April.

The upward projection in the five ASEAN countries was partly due to the stronger-than expected external demand from China and Europe, the fund said.

“In the rest of the emerging market and developing Asia, growth is expected to be vigorous and marginally higher than in the April 2017 WEO,” it read.

More specifically, economic activity this year is projected to expand by 5.2 percent in Indonesia, 5.4 percent in Malaysia, 6.6 percent in the Philippines, 3.7 percent in Thailand and 6.3 percent in Vietnam.

The IMF’s projection for Indonesia was slightly higher compared to the World Bank’s, which recently revised its economic growth forecast for the country to 5.1 percent, a slight decrease from the 5.2 percent in an earlier forecast.

The government had also projected that economic growth would reach 5.2 percent in the 2017 revised state budget, up from 5.1 percent in the original budget.

As for its worldwide projection, the IMF revised up global economic growth to 3.6 percent in 2017, only 0.1 percentage point higher than its April forecast.

Editor: Wahyu T.Rahmawati