Bank Indonesia said that Indonesia's Foreign Debt (FD) at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020 reached US$417.5 billion, consisting of public sector external debt (government and Central Bank) of US$209.2 billion and private sector foreign debt (including BUMN) US$208, 3 billion.

"With these developments, Indonesia's foreign debt at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020 grew by 3.5% (YoY), down from the growth in the previous quarter of 3.9% (YoY)," said BI Executive Director Erwin Haryono in a press release, on Monday (15/2).

He assessed that the slowdown in foreign debt was mainly due to a downturn in private foreign debt growth of around 3.8% (YoY) compared to the previous quarter of 6.2% (YoY), thanks to the slowing growth in the foreign debt of non-financial institution companies (NFIC) and a deeper contraction in the external debt growth of financial institutions (FI).

At the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, NFIC's external debt grew by 6.4% (YoY), slowing down from the previous quarter's growth of 8.4% (YoY). Also, FI's foreign debt contraction was recorded at 4.7% (YoY), bigger than the last quarter's contraction at 0.9% (YoY).

The immense foreign debt with a share of 77.1% of total private external debt came from the financial services and insurance sector, the electricity, gas, steam / hot and cold air procurement sector, the manufacturing sector, and the mining and quarrying sector.

Meanwhile, government foreign debt grew by 3.3% (YoY) or recorded to US$206.4 billion, higher than the growth in the third quarter of 2020 of 1.6% (YoY).

Investors' confidence was maintained, which encourages the inflow of foreign capital in the Government Securities (GS) market, in addition to the withdrawal of part of the foreign loan commitment to support the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the National Economic Recovery (PEN) program.

"The healthy external debt structure was reflected in the ratio of Indonesia's external debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020 which was maintained at around 39.4%, although it increased compared to the ratio in the previous quarter of 38.1%," he explained.