Hanoi (VNA) - Indonesia hasspent 11.9 trillion rupiah (about 796.7 million USD) in total through severalmarket operations to reduce the pressure from depreciated value of the nationalcurrency against the USD, the governor of the country’s central bank said onSeptember 5.
The operations were carried out by buybackmechanism on Indonesian notes (SBN) sold by foreign investors in the lastseveral days, BI Governor Perry Warjiyo said.
The buybacks were conducted on August 30-31and on September 3-4, he added.
Perry said in a hearing at the parliamentthat the operations aim to stabilise the foreign exchange market.
The buyback mechanism was part of thecentral bank's intervention to respond to the rupiah exchange rate against USD,which has developed into a level far from its fundamental range, he said.
Besides the buybacks, BI also conductedinterventions in forex trade by assuring sufficient supplies of foreign currenciesin the country as well as creating regulations to reduce the costs for firmsplanning to apply hedging mechanism in their forex asset so as to prevent itsvalue from plunging further, he added.
BI also intensified its communications withfirms particularly in encouraging them to put their export revenues in domesticmarket and preventing them to buy huge sum of foreign currencies forspeculation purposes.
The value of the Indonesian currency hasdrastically dropped to around 15,000 rupiah per 1 USD.
The bank governor said the sharp currencyvalue depreciation in Indonesia was generated by external factors that includethe global economy downturn, coupled with rising trade tensions.-VNA