Weeks before he takes office as Indonesia’s new president, Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo faces a tough challenge: keeping his campaign promise of cutting fuel subsidies and redirecting the money towards much-needed programs. With Indonesia’s economic growth slowing, economists say the expensive payouts to keep fuel prices artificially low are unsustainable. But cutting the subsidies is hugely unpopular among the public. As fears grew that the subsidized fuel quota for the year was running down, state energy company Pertamina started limiting supplies, sparking panic-buying as consumers waited in hours-long queues at petrol stations across the country. Wellian Wiranto, a Singapore-based economist, said the long queues were “a rather visual reminder that the outgoing government’s attempt at ‘quantitative tightening’ is simply not working.”
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