The Jakarta Post
The government has called on the public and investors to stay calm amid the rupiah’s volatility, as a worried public, it argues, would lead to negative sentiment that, in turn, would cause the currency to weaken further.Public anxiety would undermine efforts by the government and the central bank to curb rupiah depreciation against the United States dollar, said Iskandar Simorangkir, the deputy for macroeconomics and finance at the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister.He emphasized that, even though the rupiah had fallen to its weakest position since the 1998 financial crisis at Rp 15,000 before bouncing back to Rp 14,800, other economic aspects were not as bad as they were during the previous economic crisis.For example, although the country’s current account deficit (CAD) expanded to three percent against the GDP by the second quarter of 2018, it was worse off in the same p...