Rupiah must be replaced

Rupiah must be replaced

From Bisnis Indonesia

In view of the performance of the rupiah to the U.S. dollar this year, which has dipped as low as Rp 9,500, efforts must be made to prevent it from sliding further in the region of Rp 17,000.

As a nation, we are worried about the weakening value of the rupiah because it exerts a direct impact on our microeconomic and macroeconomic condition.

Although our export commodities are paid in foreign exchange, most people wonder whether the low exchange rate of the rupiah is really advantageous to us. The obvious thing is that speculators benefit considerably from the fluctuation of our rupiah.

Reportedly, these speculators are based in Singapore. Therefore we again should wonder why they are interested in tinkering only with the rupiah and not with the currencies of countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia and Vietnam, which are also in close proximity to Singapore.

However, we must not spend too much time on who these speculators might be and what their ulterior motives are. These people are speculators and just like those who are involved in corruption they only bring misery to people.

Therefore, in order to save our national economy, as our politicians are still learning to practice politics in a mature way and the popular economy is being translated into reality, I would like to propose that our rupiah be christened a new name.

Our bank notes can still have the pictures of our national leaders and their nominal values. The change will only be to the name of our currency.

In this way, speculators reportedly depositing tons of rupiah in Singapore will be in great trouble because they will have to exchange their rupiah with our new currency.

ROBERT PANGGABEAN

Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra