Indonesia’s capital market performance in 2022 was the best as compared to the performance of ASEAN and Asian countries in general, Chairperson of Board of Commissioners of the Financial Services Authority (OJK) Mahendra Siregar stated.

“The Indonesian capital market had survived in 2022 and its performance tended to be very positive and even the best among the ASEAN and Asian countries in general,” he remarked at the inauguration of the 2023 Indonesia Stock Exchange Trading here Monday.

Siregar noted that the positive achievement was apparent from the performance of the Indonesia Composite Stock Exchange (IHSG) in 2022 that closed at four percent higher than the index reached at the closing time of the trading in 2021.

In addition, the trading activity in 2022 also experienced a significant increase, as the frequency of daily transactions reached 1.31 million times, making it the largest in ASEAN.

Furthermore, market capitalization in Indonesia is also the highest, reaching Rp9,500 trillion or US$600 billion – equivalent to 50 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The OJK official also noted that 59 companies had issued their initial shares (IPO) on the stock exchange in 2022.

The number of capital market investors also increased to 10.3 million investors, thereby translating to a ten-fold or a one thousand percent increase since 2017, and was dominated by domestic investors, reaching 55 percent of the total investors.

“About 58.7 percent of them were (members of) the millennial generation and Generation Z. These are extraordinary achievements,” Siregar remarked.

He emphasized that the achievements were very positive, especially when the closing of trading on December 30, 2022, in other countries, such as the European states, were unfavorable, according to the report of one of the international financial media.

The stock markets in Europe fell significantly due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, high inflation, and tight monetary policies.

The European stock market was down 12 percent — the worst since 2018, and even worse when the continent was severely hit by the COVID-19 outbreak in the 2020-2021 period.

It was also reported that in 2023, European countries might experience heavy sluggishness and the Bank of England (BoE) had also stated that economic conditions in the Britain would face prolonged recession.

“It (the condition in Europe) is very different from the situation we are experiencing at the moment. Hence, we should be grateful,” he pointed out.

Source: Antara News