Indonesia's Consumer Confidence Index Rose to 118.5 the Same Month Factory PMI Fell
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5 min read
On 1 September 2026, Indonesia's factories delivered bad news: Manufacturing PMI slipped to 49.8, back into contraction after one month above the 50 line. Eight days later, on 9 September, Bank Indonesia published a completely different signal about the same month. Household confidence did not fall. It rose. The Consumer Confidence Index climbed to 118.5, its first increase after two straight monthly declines.
Same country, same month, two official surveys pointing in opposite directions. How is that possible, and which one should you actually pay attention to?
The Consumer Confidence Index, known in Indonesia as the Indeks Keyakinan Konsumen (IKK), comes from Bank Indonesia's monthly Survei Konsumen (Consumer Survey). It has run every month since October 1999, and since January 2007 it has surveyed about 4,600 households across 18 Indonesian cities, including Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Medan and Makassar.
The index is built on a simple rule: 100 is the line between optimism and pessimism. Above 100 means more households feel positive about the economy than negative. Below 100 means the reverse. It is the same basic logic as Manufacturing PMI's 50 line, just answering a different question, from a completely different group of people.
The headline IKK is not a single question. It comes from two sub-indexes, and checking the last three months of Bank Indonesia's own published data shows the headline number is simply their average:
| Month | IKK (headline) | IKE (current conditions) | IEK (expectations) |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 2026 | 117.8 | 109.2 | 126.4 |
| July 2026 | 116.8 | 107.9 | 125.7 |
| August 2026 | 118.5 | 109.4 | 127.6 |
IKE, the Current Economic Conditions Index, asks how households see their income, job availability and durable-goods buying right now. IEK, the Consumer Expectations Index, asks how they expect income, business conditions and job availability to look six months from now. Both sit well above the 100 optimism line every month shown here, but IEK runs consistently higher: Indonesian households are more optimistic about the future than they are about the present.
August 2026 is the clearest case of the split this year. Manufacturing PMI fell from July's 50.2 to 49.8, a move back into contraction driven by softer new orders and output, even as factories' own business confidence about the year ahead actually strengthened to a seven-month high. In the same month, the Consumer Confidence Index rose from 116.8 to 118.5, and Bank Indonesia's own survey showed the average propensity to consume, the share of income households actually spend rather than save, rose too, from 72.7% in July to 74.2% in August.
Two things explain most of the gap. First, they measure different parts of the economy: PMI tracks factory output and new orders, which lean toward goods that get exported or sold wholesale. The Consumer Confidence Index tracks household income and spending, much of which goes to retail, food and services that never show up in a factory survey at all. Second, the timing is different every single month: PMI for a given month is published on the first business day of the next month, while the Consumer Survey for the same month does not land until roughly a week later, so the two numbers are never really describing the same information set at the same moment.
Manufacturing PMI says the most about companies that sit closest to the factory floor: exporters, industrial suppliers, heavy equipment. The Consumer Confidence Index says the most about companies that sell directly to households. Sumber Alfaria Trijaya (AMRT), which runs the Alfamart convenience store network, depends on exactly the kind of everyday household spending this survey tracks, foot traffic, grocery baskets and discretionary buying, far more than it depends on factory output data. When the two surveys point in different directions, a retailer like AMRT is arguably read better against the Consumer Confidence Index than against PMI.
Neither survey moves the IHSG (Indonesia's main stock index) by itself, the same lesson Manufacturing PMI's own release history already shows. What both numbers do well is add context to the bigger picture, alongside where the BI Rate, inflation and the rupiah sit that same month. NetWort's Macro Context page tracks the BI Rate, Indonesia's CPI inflation and the USD/IDR rate together, useful background for judging whether a Consumer Confidence move like August's is likely to show up anywhere else, or stay a one-month blip.