Bank Indonesia (BI) is cautious of the increase of the private sector’s loans in foreign currencies. This was conveyed during BI’s coordination meeting with Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Finance Minister yesterday (23/4). Head of the Fiscal Policy Agency at the Finance Department, Anggito Abimanyu, said that during the meeting BI asked how much financing in foreign currency was, especially for the 10,000 megawatt electricity generator mega-project. “BI Governor said not to let the private sector’s foreign currency loans be in excess. But we can only monitor it,” said Anggito at the Finance Department building, Jakarta, yesterday. He refused to comment on whether the private foreign currency loan is in excess so BI and the government are concerned this will cause Indonesia’s economy to break down – like the economic crisis in 1997-1998. “I have no comment on that issue. The current condition is different from before the crisis,” he said. State Minister for the National Development Planning concurrently Head of the National Development Agency (Bappenas), Paskah Suzetta, confirmed there are concerns that uncontrolled private foreign currency loans have the risk to trigger an economic crisis as in 1997. However, he said that neither the government nor BI can limit the incoming or outgoing capital flow like what Thailand does. “Those are private loans. How can we regulate them? Moreover, we follow the free foreign reserves system,” he explained. BI’s data shows that in late December 2006, private loans totaled US$51.131 billion. This number soared by US$1.1 billion from September’s US$50.056 billion. The government’s foreign currency loan was US$74.126 billion. From the private loans, US$39.18 billion belonged to banking and the remaining to the non-banking sector.
__________
Tempo
Labels: Internet News, Loan, Politics
|
