Indonesia’s economic rebound: retail sales growth peaked

Recently, Bank Indonesia released the data on the growth of Indonesian retail sales and in April 2021, the growth peaked by 15.6%. This, by far, is the highest grown on retail sales in Indonesia since 2016 on a low base effect. This is a significant growth considering that there was a 14.6% fall in the previous month.

This also marked Indonesia’s economic rebound from the COVID-19 crisis it went through after 17 months. When the first two covid cases were discovered in March 2020, the sales growth was not directly affected as there was a surge of hoarding. The crisis only began to take effect in April 2020, when mass lockdown on shopping centers and social restrictions are enforced. This caused a contraction of 16.9% in retail sales.

Bank Indonesia also identified the Ramadan month to be one of the driving factors of this growth.