IFC clarifies

IFC clarifies

Thank you for having The Jakarta Post reporter to attend our
media briefing and for printing the story SMEs in Aceh finding it
difficult to start over (Wednesday Dec. 21, p.3).

Nevertheless , I would like to request a clarification. In the
eighth paragraph of the story, I am quoted as saying "BI, IFC and
related lenders might exempt loans that turned bad because of the
tsunami and not because of mismanagement."

Unfortunately I did not make this statement, because it is
clear that BI has given the rights to exempt loans directly to
the financial institution and IFC has no capacity to exempt
loans.

I did say that the IFC program in Aceh is interested in
investigating the issue of loan exemption, and potentially seeing
how we might support SMEs and financial institutions to resolve
the issue.

In an environment like Aceh/Nias it is very important that
expectations about what is and is not being done are clear.

CHRIS RICHARDS, General Manager, IFC, Jakarta

Note: We apologize for the error.

--Editor