Central Bank Governor Darmin Nasution Bids Farewell

Jakarta, May 21 (ANTARA) - Indonesia`s central bank governor Darmin Nasution bid farewell to newsmen covering the bank`s activities here on Monday. Darmin would end his term as Bank Indonesia governor on May 22 after four years at the helm replacing Boediono who resigned to run for vice president then and is now the country`s vice president. Darmin would be replaced by Agus Martowardojo, the former finance minister, as of May 24. Darmin said there are still a lot of tasks and challenges the central bank would meet but he believed the new governor would be able to carry out his duties well. He said the central bank`s control functions have now worked very well and so no bank would miss the monitoring of the central bank as a regulator and supervisor. "No single bank in our republic is not supervised by BI," he said. He said he had already improved bank supervision and checking well meaning "there are no more problematic banks now." He said one must not be doubtful when settling bank problems and must also know the problems well before settling them. "If their problems cannot be settled just sell them. Why bother them if they would only burden others including the owners or the boards. The policy has been proven successful," he said. Immediately after he took over the post in July 2009 Darmin imposed a low rate policy, which he considered key to moving the banking sector and national economy including small and medium businesses. Under his leadership the BI Rate had been lowered from 6.50 percent to currently 5.75 percent. "I am indeed a pro-low rate because based on a research we carried out while at the LPEM UI (University of Indonesia) 20 years ago the rate always tends to rise. But in 2011 although inflation rose to seven percent it was not caused by monetary factors but by rain that caused the price of chilli to soar," he said commenting on his controversial decision to lower the BI Rate from 6.50 to 6.0 percent in October 11, 2011 which was later praised because it was proven able to make the country`s economy to grow above six percent despite economic crisis in Europe.