Indonesia's currency slides as emerging markets sell off

The emerging markets sell-off has pushed the Indonesian rupiah to its weakest level against the dollar since the 1998 Asian crisis.

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Indonesia has bolstered its defences against the rupiah sell-off
(Image credit: Credit: PACIFIC PRESS / Alamy Stock Photo)

The emerging markets sell-off has pushed the Indonesian rupiah to its weakest level against the dollar since the 1998 Asian crisis. This year thecurrency has shed 9%.Indonesia has "a history of volatile inflation and currency moves", notes Reuters. Its current fragility comes from a mix of longstanding and new factors. The current-account deficit has widened "worryingly". In the second quarter of the year, it amounted to about $8bn. The central bank expects it to grow from last year's 1.7% to 2.5% of GDP in 2018.

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Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.

Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.

Marina is trilingual and lives in London.