KALLA : GLOBAL CRISIS AFFECTED RI BUT ONLY SLIGHTLY

Jakarta, Jan 14 (ANTARA) - Former vice president Jusuf Kalla admitted that the global financial crisis at the end of 2008 had had an impact on Indonesia but only in a small way.

"The global crisis did have an impact but only to a small extent," Kalla said here on Thursday in reply to a question from a member of the House special committee investigating the government's decision to bail out Bank Century with Rp6.7 trillion in fresh funds.

In previous inquiry questioning, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani and former central bank (BI) governor Boediono had said at the time there was a serious crisis in Indonesia as result of the global financial crunch.

Kalla said the criteria of a crisis must be made clear. At that time, he said, a crisis occurred in the United States that affected its capital market.

The crisis also impacted banks which provided credits for housing in the United States. "But our banks did not provide mortgages. What took place was a secondary impact, namely our exports declined," he said.

Jusuf Kalla acknowledged that the US financial crisis had impacted on Indonesia's capital market but the country's capital market accounted for only 23 percent of money in circulation and of the 23 percent, 60 percent belonged to foreign investors.

"Only less than a half percent of the Indonesian people owned shares lsited at the stock exchange," he said.

Besides, the rupiah declined to only 12,000 rupiah per US dollar and such a decline was actually still normal.

Jusuf Kalla also said that economic conditions in 2008 were quite different from those in 2008. In 1998 the depreciation of the rupiah reached 400 percent while in 2008 the rupiah only fell 20 percent.

He said that indeed there was crisis but not as serious as portrayed by certain quarters. Kalla compared a serious crisis with a storm.

"If it caused only one house to collapse, it cannot be called a storm. The house collapsed only because its foundations were weak," he said.