Rupiah Falls After Fed Taper Announcement

jpnn.com, JAKARTA - The rupiah exchange rate closed down 53 points or 0.37 percent to Rp 14,366 per US dollar.

The fall was triggered by the Federal Reserve's taper announcement on Wednesday (3/11) local time or Thursday (4/11) West Indonesian time.

"US government bond yields strengthened after the announcement. This prompted stronger US dollar in the exchange rate throughout the day. The 10-year tenor touched 1.6 percent again," said money market analyst Ariston Tjendra when contacted in Jakarta, Thursday.

The Fed announced that it would soon begin reducing the pace of its monthly bond purchases, the first step toward pulling back on the massive amount of help it had been providing markets and the economy.

The US central bank also announced a $15 billion monthly cut to $120 billion in monthly purchases of government bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

"But there is not much signal when the central bank might start the next phase of normalizing policy by raising interest rates," he explained.

Ariston said domestically, the daily number of Covid-19 cases on Wednesday (3/11) reached 801, totaling 4.25 million. The number of deaths due to exposure to Covid-19 reached 24, totaling 143,481.

The number of recovered cases increased by 814, totaling 4.09 million, and the number of active Covid-19 cases reaching 11,592.