Bank Century bailed out on the brink of crisis: Anggito

Fiscal Policy Agency head Anggito Abimanyu said Monday that Bank Century was bailed out to thwart an economic crisis.

Anggito said he used information from the agency’s early warning system to manage fiscal risks. The system consists of 17 main crisis indicators, including oil and gold prices and foreign exchange reserves.

“If we did not do anything in October [2008], we would have been experiencing a crisis,” he told a hearing at the House of Representatives' commission IX overseeing financial affairs, in Jakarta, as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

Maruarar Sirait of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) disagreed with Anggito’s statement. “BI [the central bank) reported no crisis at all.”

Yet, Anggito refused to contradict his data with the central bank. “BI has a stress test for the banking sector; we have [the test] at a macro level.” (nkn)