Jakarta Index Gains, Rupiah Flat On Thursday

Jakarta, Nov 7 (Antara) - The Jakarta composite share price index gained slightly in the opening trade on Thursday with investors buying more than selling shares. The index of the Indonesian Stock Exchange (BEI) opened 4.65 points or 0.10 percent higher at 4,454.41 points with the index of 45 most liquid stocks up 0.16 percent to 745.34 points. Purchases of a number of stocks which fell in price earlier contributed to the increase in index, Trust Securities`s chief researcher Reza Priyambada said. The country`s economy, which is still growing, partly prompted the share buying, Reza added. Technically there is hope of technical rebound of the BEI index which is now above the bottom line, he added, predicting the BEI index would hover around 4,427--4,468 points on Thursday. Meanwhile, a team of technical analysts of Mandiri Sekuritas, said positive sentiments was brought about by an increase in the country`s 3rd quarter GDP. In addition, a US$1.3 billion increase in the country`s foreign exchanger reserve to US$97 billion by the end of October contributed to the rise of the index. "Despite declining trend of rupiah and profit taking by foreign investors , the BEI index continued to climb," the team said. Regional markets such as Hang Seng suffered a 0.46 percent fall in index to 22,930.04 points with Nikkei-225 index down 0.27 percent to 14,297.19 points, and that of Straits Times gaining 0.15 percent to 3,210.13 points. Meanwhile rupiah in interbank transactions remained unchanged at the level of 11,416 per US dollar in the first minutes of trading on Thursday. Reza Priyambada said rupiah fluctuation tended to be stable after the country`s economy grew relatively as estimated. "Growing demand for rupiah bonds by foreign banks also brought about positive sentiment to rupiah," he said. He said rupiah could still gain against the US dollar this week with the increase in the country`s foreign exchange reserves. Rully Arya Wisnubroto, a financial market analyst from Bank Mandiri, the rupiah movement is still shadowed by uncertainty over monetary stimulus tapering off by the US central bank. Meanwhile, there was no positive in the global financial market, he said, but, he added, stronger growth of country`s economy expected in the last quarter of this year would bring rupiah back to a positive area.