The vulnerable financial issue: Capital flight in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia is a developing country with a high demand for capital from both domestic and international sources. However, international capital flows are needed the most. For non-Western countries, especially Indonesia, capital flight is an unfavourable financial problem. This research aims to summarise capital flight from Indonesia and analyse the impact of macroeconomic and non-macroeconomic determinants through capital flight. Macroeconomic determinants include budget deficits, economic growth, inflation rates, and exchange rates. Nonmacroeconomic determinants are the degree of trade openness, interest rate differences, and dummy ratings. The data comes from the Bank of Indonesia, OECD, Moody s, and BPS-Statistics Indonesia. The coverage of this research is the Indonesian quarter from 2010 to 2018. This period complies with the latest procedures of the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments Manual (BPM 6). In this research, the measurement of the capital flight is the World Bank’s residual method, trade misinvoicing method, and combined method. This research finds that, compared with other economics, non-macroeconomics is the most influential determinant of capital flight from Indonesia.