Pressure on the rupiah

Pressure on the rupiah

The presently diminishing value of the rupiah is not due only to monetary and market factors. Rather, it is the question of the credibility of some of our highly placed government officials that is most responsible for causing the value of our currency to fall against the United States dollar.

The matter of transparency with regard to the release of the audit executed by PricewaterhouseCoopers and delivered to the State Audit Board is, in this respect, vital to rehabilitate the credibility of the Habibie administration in the eyes of the public, both at home and abroad. We therefore find it difficult to understand the indifference shown by our government leaders, even though our national economy is threatened with destruction. This is one of the reasons why Indonesia's economy has sunk so much deeper than those of Thailand and Korea: It is because the public, here and abroad, has lost its trust in our leaders.

The rupiah's value is now dependent on the public's trust. The more the public trusts this country's leaders, the higher the value of the rupiah against the dollar is likely to be. The more the government is willing to be transparent and disclose what is behind the various current political and economic scandals, the more the world will be ready to trust us and the quicker our economy will be revived.

-- Bisnis Indonesia, Jakarta