Governor Perry Warjiyo said in a pre-recorded message at a media launch on Thursday BI would offer attractive returns on the term deposits. "We hope to make the best use of these export earnings to support the national economy, the sufficiency of FX reserves and the stability of the rupiah," Warjiyo said. Warjiyo has previously said exporters had preferred to keep their funds offshore due to low interest rates at home at local banks, amid a global U.S. dollar liquidity crunch. Due to this trend, Southeast Asia's largest economy did not see a significant rise in FX reserves last year despite its exports hitting a record high of $292 billion. Separately, the government is drafting a regulation that would require exporters of natural resources and derivative products to keep 30% of proceeds at home for three months. Officials have said the regulation will be issued soon. Edi Susianto, head of BI's monetary management department, said exporters have responded well to the term deposit instrument, which the central bank will offer to agent banks twice a week during the early stage starting on Thursday. "For the transactions expected this afternoon, some (exporters) have committed to put their proceeds in, but others are still calculating how much to include in the (term deposit) because they must calculate their short term liabilities," Edi said. (Reporting by Gayatri Suroyo and Stefanno Sulaiman; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor)
JAKARTA, March 2 (Reuters) - Indonesia's central bank
launched on Thursday a foreign exchange (FX) term deposit
instrument aimed at persuading exporters to keep their proceeds
at home longer and shoring up the country's FX reserves.
Bank Indonesia (BI) said in a statement that twenty banks,
including foreign banks, will participate in the scheme, in
which they will act as agents for BI.
Exporters could place their deposit with an agent bank,
which would then pass on the funds to BI to be placed in a term
deposit with a 1-, 3-, or 6-month tenure.
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