Indonesia has often been described as the next India. With 250m people, it has a huge population of aspiring consumers. Like India, it is a democracy, albeit a far more recent convert. Like India, too, its solid record of growth has been propelled not by manufactured exports but by domestic demand. When the global financial crisis struck, both economies weathered the storm better than most.

Suddenly, however, the comparison with India does not sound so sweet. After India, Indonesia has been the Asian economy that has received most scrutiny from markets concerned about its current account deficit and reliance on capital inflows. More fundamentally, market pressure is raising awkward questions about the growth model of an Indonesian economy that has cruised along without laying the policy foundations for sustained development. Such doubts apply equally to a number of other emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa that have floated on a tide of easy money and high commodity prices.

The comparisons between India and Indonesia, the world’s second and fourth most populous nations, are many. Indonesia is now running a hefty trade deficit after years of surplus came to an abrupt end last year. The rapid deterioration since 2012 has largely been a result of weaker prices for commodities such as coal and palm oil, undermining the notion that Indonesia’s economy is not export-dependent.