GOVT READY FOR CRITICISM OVER DEBT MANAGEMENT: MINISTER

Jakarta, June 17 (ANTARA) - Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the government was ready to be criticized over its debt management though it had managed its foreign loans in a better way than in the past.

"Although the government has managed its debts well, I think people will continue to criticize it," the minister said.

She said that as long as the criticism was based on complete information she would be ready to give response but if it was only rhetoric and did not have much merit, she would ignore it.

The minister said that the government had made good progress in its debts management, including its external debts, where the State Audit Board (BPK) had provided it with an unqualified opinion over all its book keeping account on loans.

"Components in the book keeping account on loans, including the payment of debt principles and of the state debentures, are all already under unqualified opinion status," she said.

The minister explained about the government debts in response to the many criticism and discourses among NGO and observers on Indonesia's debt position in the on-going presidential campaigns.

The country's debts issue is always taken up as a theme of a campaign to evaluate the government's performance, while in fact many countries were involved in debt taking.

She said that in nominal term, the increase in the country's debts whether in the form rupiah, dollar and yen, had happened as a result of accumulation from the past.

"Our debts highly increased during the 1997-1998 economic crisis, not only because of the rise in nominal term but also of the sharp depreciation of the rupiah," the minister said.

Indonesia has debts with several main creditors such as Japan, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Even the the nominal value of the country's debts continue to increase, its ratio against the country's gross domestic product (GDP) continue to drop.

In 2004, the ratio of debts to the GDP was 57 percent but now it already dropped to 32 percent.