Indonesia, Japan extend Bilateral Swap Agreement

Jakarta, Oct. 14 (ANTARA) - Bank Indonesia (BI) and Bank of Japan (BoJ) -- the agent of Japan’s Finance Ministry -- signed the extension of the Bilateral Swap Arrangement (BSA) that is valid from October 14, 2021. As the earlier agreement, the cooperation enables Indonesia to swap rupiah to US dollar and/or Japanese yen with the same swap facility, up to US$22.76 billion or equivalent to Japanese yen. “The BSA extension between Indonesia and Japan is also in line with the amendment of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) as the reference of this BSA cooperation,” BI’s communication department director, Muhamad Nur, stated in a press release issued here on Thursday. CMIM is the regional finance cooperation initiated by the ASEAN+3 countries to facilitate liquidity support for member countries as their financial safety nets. Indonesia and Japan believe that the BSA extension can aid in bolstering financial cooperation between both countries, Nur remarked, adding that such a corporation can contribute to financial stability either at the regional or global scale. The BSA of Indonesia and Japan refers to the bilateral agreement on currency exchange between BI and BoJ in swapping rupiah to US dollar or Japanese yen as the second line of defense in maintaining external security. The BSA of Indonesia and Japan was first inked on February 17, 2003, and was then extended on October 14, 2018, with a three-year validity period.