Indonesian Banks Considered Tough to Face Crisis

"The European financial crisis will not affect the performance of national banks. In liquidity terms, national banks’ liquidity exposure to European and United States banks amounts to only about Rp100 trillion which is not too big compared with their overall assets," Bank Indonesia (BI/central bank)’s Deputy Governor Muliaman D Hadad said here on Monday.
He said that the results of a stress test carried out by BI showed that the impact of the financial crisis in Europe and the United States on national banks was very small. After all, banks’ assets, capital and credit commitment are still running well.
"We have carried out a test to see what will happen if the crisis spreads to all European countries. It turned out the impact on national banks’ capital will be small," he said.
However, he said, Indonesia had to remain alert to the crisis’ psychological aspect because if it dragged on , it could affect national economic growth. Muliaman said that what needed to be monitored was the condition of individual banks if they experienced internal problems when the global economic crisis had not yet improved like nowadays.
"We have to systematically monitor banks one by one to ensure assure that it would not create a problem for the industry."