Bailout not needed with good supervision: Soros

Global financier and philanthropist George Soros said a bailout was not needed if regulators could manage to supervise banks successfully, as happened during the recent global financial crisis.

While Soros declined to comment on the government's move to bail out Bank Century, he said that in general it was appropriate, to save the financial system from collapsing.

"The financial markets are unstable and prone to create financial crises, therefore they need to be regulated and regulators have to exercise themselves so that they don’t need to bail out banks, because the banks should be solid," he said Wednesday after meeting Vice President Boediono at the vice presidential Palace.

"On the whole, I think Indonesia passed through a very, very difficult period relative to the damage, if you compare the amount of money that had to be used in Indonesia compared to the tremendous and very much larger amount used in the United States and Europe," he added.

The government through the Deposit Insurance Corporation disbursed Rp 6.76 trillion rupiah (US$723.3 million) to save Bank Century.