Lecture Abstract

The tapering talk in 2013 had serious impacts on some Emerging Market countries, i.e., Indonesia, India, Brazil, South Africa and Turkey (the so-called Fragile Five). To face pressures in the financial market, these countries each undertook a series of macroeconomic policy efforts. Interestingly, Indonesia and India were able to handle the problem in the shortest time and succeeded in macroeconomic stabilization, evidenced by the decrease in their current account deficit and the stabilization of their financial markets. This leads us into questions of why Indonesia was relatively successful in facing the Taper Tantrum and breaking out from the Fragile Five, the policies undertaken and why they were chosen. Equally important is to understand the political economy process behind these policies. These questions are the focus of this presentation.

About the Speaker

Dr. Muhamad Chatib Basri is Indonesia’s former Minister of Finance and was a Chairman of Indonesia’s Investment Coordinating Board. He is the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Mandiri Institute and Chairman of The Indonesia Infrastructure Finance.

Dr Basri teaches at the Department of Economics, University Indonesia. He is Thee Kian Wie Visiting Professor at the Australian National University (2016-2017). He was Ash Centre Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School (2015-2016), Pacific Fellow at the Centre on Global Transformation University of California San Diego (2016).  He co-founded CReco Research Institute, a Jakarta based economic consulting firm in 2010.

Dr. Basri was a member of the Asia Pacific Regional Advisory Group of the IMF. He was also a member of  the High Level Trade Experts Group co-chaired by Jagdish Bhagwati and Peter Sutherland.

He earned his PhD in Economics from the Australian National University.

He has acted as a consultant for the World Bank, the IMF,  the ADB, the USAID, AUSAID, OECD and UNCTAD.