According to the Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER), inflation is the biggest economic risk facing Asian countries in the next year.
Other risk factors, such as US monetary policy, China's economic slowdown, currency depreciation, and the COVID-19 pandemic, are considered to pose a lower risk to several Asian countries.
This is recorded in a report titled *JCER/Nikkei Consensus Survey on Asian Economies*, released on Monday (4/7/2022). The JCER report is based on a survey of economists in the five largest Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, plus India.
From this survey, JCER assessed that Indonesia faces a high inflation risk in the next year, with a risk score of 78 points on a scale of 0-100. This score places Indonesia in the "alarming" category.
Several other countries face even higher inflation risks: the Philippines with a risk score of 93 points and India with 87 points. Both countries are also classified as "alarming" in terms of inflation.
Meanwhile, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore face slightly lower inflation risks, with risk scores ranging from 55-67 points. This places them in the "cautious" category.
"With inflation expected to rise, some banks in Asian countries are raising benchmark interest rates and changing their accommodative monetary policies. Economists predict that interest rate increases in some Asian countries will continue until 2023," wrote JCER in its report.
Similar opinions were expressed by Wisnu Wardana, an economist at Bank Danamon, who was one of the respondents to the JCER survey.
"With rising inflation, Bank Indonesia needs to adjust its interest rate policy in the third quarter of 2022," said Wisnu Wardana in the survey.
(Also read: Indonesia's Annual Inflation Reaches 4.35% in June 2022, Highest in the Last 5 Years)