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Ministry, BI, OJK team up to prevent dollar speculative transactions
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Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati (Antara/Sigid Kurniawan)
T
he Finance Ministry, Bank Indonesia (BI) and the Financial Service Authority (OJK) have teamed up to prevent speculative transactions of the US dollar that they believe have sparked negative sentiment in the country’s economy.
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the three institutions under the Financial System Policy Committee (KKSK) would monitor and study the behavior of market players in carrying out transactions.
“We need to monitor whether their transactions are legitimate, whether they are needed to meet their industry’s requirements or whether they are just illegitimate transactions,” Sri Mulyani said in Jakarta on Monday as reported by kontan.co.id.
She added that legitimate transactions included those for raw material import transactions, capital goods imports and foreign debt payments.
Sri Mulyani said the government saw the other transactions as speculative activities.
“If we find illegitimate transactions, we will impose tough measures because they are only speculative and spark negative sentiment,” she said, adding that the measures were needed to prevent a further decline in the country’s foreign exchange reserve.
The foreign exchange reserve in July stood at US$118.3 billion, down $1.5 billion from June. The August figure is declining further because the central bank needed to intervene in the market due to the further weakening of the rupiah.
The foreign exchange reserve had declined by $12 billion since January. (bbn)
