Jakarta Index Up Slightly In Opening

Jakarta, Oct 23 (Antara) - The Jakarta composite index (JCI) opened slightly higher on Thursday on cabinet line-up to be announced by President Joko Widodo expected to be acceptable to the market. The index of the Indonesian Stock Exchange rose 2.26 points or 0.04 percent in the first minutes of trading to 5,076.58 points. The index of 45 most liquid stocks rose 0.07 percent to 863.03 points. Head of Research of Valbury Asia Securities Alfiansyah said the market players are following political developments ahead of the announcement expected in one or two days. "Speculation will continue in the market until Joko Widodo made the announcement," he added. The market players expected the government to announce immediately its policy in subsidized oil fuel (BBM). The government has indicated it would raise the price of subsidized BBM next month. Externally , there are worries that at least 11 banks in Europe would not make it through the stress test sending negative sentiment to Asian market including BEI. "However it is still speculative as the result of stress test would be known only by the end of this week," Alfiansyah said. Regional markets such as Hang Seng and Nikkei recorded a decline in index but an increase was posted by Straits. Meanwhile, the national currency rupiah, lost some of its value in inter-bank transactions trading at the level of 12,018 per US dollar weakening from earlier level of 12,013 per dollar. Samuel Sekuritas` analyst Rangga Cipta said rupiah weakened amid speculation about the cabinet of the new president. The declining trend could continue to follow the global trend. However, improvement of Chinese economic data annoucned on Thursday is expected to prop up rupiah from falling deeper against the US dollar. Chief researcher of Monex Investindo Futures Ariston Tjendra said the Chinese manufacturing data would reduce fears of investors over the condition of the world second largest economies. Chinese manufacturing index, according to HSBC was 50.4 in October or higher than expectation of 50.3, Ariston said. "Brisker Chinese manufacturing activities give greater expectation that Indonesia`s economic performance would improve in the last quarter of 2014," he said.