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