Shuttlers win Indonesia’s
second gold

The country’s badminton team earned a second gold at the Asian Games after Hendra Setiawan and Mohammad Ahsan won the men’s doubles final at Gyeyang Gymnasium in Incheon, South Korea, on Sunday. Hendra and Ahsan silenced the home crowd by defeating Lee Yong-dae and Yoo Yeon-seong 21-16, 16-21, 21-17. The Indonesian pair had only beaten their opponents once in their previous six meetings.

“Thanks for the support. I dedicate this victory to coach Herry [Iman Pierngadi], who has helped us make this come true,” Ahsan said after the medal ceremony. “It was not an easy match, but for this Asian Games I’ve had extra motivation as I may not be at the next games,” said Hendra, who added the gold to the Olympic gold he won with Markis Kido in Beijing in 2008.

It was a pulsating match between the world’s top two pairs, with the lead changing hands several times, but Hendra and Ahsan held off their Korean opponents as the match neared its conclusion due to a shift in tactics from their coach. “They [Hendra and Ahsan] were affected by the breeze,” said Herry, referring to the second game. “I told them not to make their shots too high and warned them against making unforced errors because this would’ve placed them under more pressure.”

The Indonesian team could add a third gold via the mixed doubles pairing of Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir, whose semifinal win over Xu Chen and Ma Jin earned them a final matchup against Olympic champions Zhang Nan and Zhao Yunlei of China. The Chinese duo prevented an all-Indonesia final after they stopped Praveen Jordan and Debby Susanto in the other semifinal.

China won women’s singles gold after Wang Yihan defeated fellow Chinese Li Xuerui 11-21, 21-17, 21-7 and is assured of men’s singles gold with Lin Dan and Chen Long to play in the final. “We hope we can win a third gold to lift Indonesia’s standing in the medal tally,” Herry said.

Indonesia moved to 14th with two gold, three silver and seven bronze medals. China surpassed the century mark with 102 gold medals, while Korea pulled away from Japan with 48 gold medals. Japan was in third place with 44 gold medals. Indonesia will also hope for medals from Hanam Misari in canoeing, where Indonesia will feature in eight of 12 finals.

In bowling, Novie Phang, Putty Insavilla Armein and Alisha Nabila Larasati finished in fourth place in the women’s trio event, while Billy Muhammad Islam, Diwan Rezaldy Syahril and Adhiguna Widiantoro trailed in 15th among 35 participants. In cycling, Aiman Cahyadi and Hari Fitrianto were almost 10 minutes off the pace as they found themselves in 27th and 29th position, respectively. Diving and soft tennis will begin on Monday, while taekwondo is set for Tuesday and karate and the modern pentathlon will take place on Wednesday.

‘Undervalued’ rupiah
may attract investors

The rupiah is among the lowest-valued currencies in Asia, but Indonesian assets will remain attractive as a low valuation means additional returns on investment from currency gains, say analysts. The rupiah has the cheapest valuation among nine major Asian currencies rated, based on their real effective exchange rate (REER), according to data compiled by strategists from the ANZ Bank released on Sept. 23.

Indonesian bonds were also rated as the cheapest, while its equities traded on the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) are the region’s third most-expensive-based on their price-to-earnings ratio.
Overall, the ANZ Bank ranked assets in Indonesia as the second-cheapest in the region after China, based on their real valuations, with the Philippines and Thailand rated as the most expensive. “In a rising interest rate environment, investors will become increasingly focused on valuations,” noted Khoon Goh, a Singapore-based senior currency strategist with the ANZ Bank.

The US Federal Reserve is expected to increase interest rates next year and countries that have expensive asset prices, such as Thailand and the Philippines, will be at a higher risk of outflows, according to him. “China, Indonesia and Singapore look to have the cheapest relative asset valuation in the region, which could help mitigate any sell-off to some extent,” stated Khoon. These expected inflows would help Bank Indonesia (BI) in anticipating tighter global liquidity that could come next year.

The rupiah was trading at 12,007 per US dollar by the end of Friday, according to the Jakarta Interbank Spot Dollar Rate (JISDOR). The currency has weakened 2.4 percent this month. The rupiah was “undervalued” when it was traded at 12,000 per US dollar, according to BI Senior Deputy Governor Mirza Adityaswara, who pointed out the 11,600-11,900 per dollar range as more reflective of the currency’s fair value. “Our compass long-run model estimates the rupiah to be about 4 percent undervalued,” Chua Hak Bin, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said recently in an email interview.

The US-based investment bank forecast the rupiah would strengthen to 11,800 per dollar by the end of this year. The rupiah suffered because Indonesia’s central bank was seen as indecisive in tackling external imbalances as the country’s current-account deficit (CAD) improved only marginally, according to Huw McKay, a Sydney-based economist with Westpac Bank.

That compares to the Indian rupee’s strengthening after the country’s central bank raised rates aggressively following a sharp narrowing of its CAD, he noted in an email interview. “BI was less decisive and the CAD suffered again once the ore export ban hit resource shipments,” said McKay, who described the Indonesian rupiah as the most “stagflationary” currency among all 11 Asian currencies that he had surveyed. In the medium term, further bullish sentiment for the rupiah may come from the potential adjustment in fuel prices, which is expected to reduce oil imports and narrow the current-account deficit, analysts have said.