Tracking Indonesia’s economic recovery from COVID-19

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While help is still on the way, it is still important to track a country’s progress to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the lack of single platform providing the necessary data in Indonesia poses a challenge to do just that. The relevant data, such as consumer confidence and confirmed cases and deaths, are publicly accessible but are scattered across several websites.

Using R, I developed in early November a website that I hope can overcome that challenge. By aggregating the data on one platform, the website seeks to serve as a sort of recovery tracker for not only the economy but also the public health.

You can visit the tracker at https://dzulfiqarfr.github.io/indonesia-recovery-tracker/

A summary table of the economic indicators on the website.

I use R Markdown to build the website. To create the interactive graphs, I use Plotly through the plotly package. I also use the gt package to create the tables on the website.

The indicators are as follow:
  • Gross domestic product (GDP);
  • Inflation;
  • Unemployment rate;
  • Poverty rate;
  • Consumer confidence;
  • Retail sales;
  • Movement trends;
  • Confirmed cases and deaths; and
  • Coronavirus tests

A graph of the retail sales index on the website.

The website does not cover all available economic and public health indicators, but I try to make sure it has timely and relevant data to see how the country is doing as the pandemic unfolds.

I may add another indicator to the website in the future, if necessary.

The website is still far from perfect. So if you have any suggestions or find a bug, please let me know!

Published by

Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman

A journalist living in Bekasi, Indonesia

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