June 5, 2026
JAKARTA – The rupiah slid to a new record low of Rp 18,000 per United States dollar on Thursday, extending its losses this year to more than 7 percent and making it Asia’s worst-performing currency as rising oil prices and deteriorating trade dynamics rattled investors.
The currency came under renewed pressure amid data released earlier this week showing the country’s trade surplus nearly evaporated in April on soaring prices for imported oil and gas due to a global supply crunch sparked by the Iran War.
Brent Crude was trading around US$97 on Thursday morning, while hostilities in the Middle East erupted anew and stalled talks between Teheran and Washington stoked fears of prolonged market disruption.
“The rupiah is weakening not only because the dollar is strengthening, but because markets are increasing Indonesia’s risk premium,” Bank Permata chief economist Josua Pardede told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Weaker confidence is compounding the currency’s woes and has pushed foreign investors to demand higher yields or cut exposure to rupiah assets, he added.
Bank Indonesia said it would continue monitoring global and domestic financial market developments and take necessary measures to stabilize the rupiah and strengthen external resilience.
“The central bank continues to be present in the market by optimizing all available policy instruments to ensure market mechanisms function properly and maintain adequate foreign-exchange liquidity to support financial market stability,” BI spokesperson Ramdan Denny Prakoso said in a statement on Wednesday.
The rupiah’s decline also weighed on domestic assets, with the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) Composite index dropping to a five-year low.
The benchmark opened weaker on Thursday and fell as much as 4.99 percent to 5,644 points, before rebounding ahead of the lunch break.