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Oxford plays host to Finance Minister Dr Sri Mulyani Indrawati

15 January 2008

On Tuesday 15 January at 2.30pm: The Examination Schools, Oxford University, will be the venue for a lecture by Indonesia’s Finance Minister, Dr Sri Mulyani Indrawati. She is one of the world’s youngest Finance Ministers, who was voted Finance Minister of the Year (internationally) in 2006 by Euromoney.

Dr Mulyani is known for being a passionate advocate for her country. A year ago she issued a plea to the world's most powerful economic leaders to waive conditionality and to let Indonesia get on with reforming its economy. Speaking to the world’s top economic policy-makers (the Board of Governors of the IMF and World Bank) in 2006, she said: ‘Like many governments we have a comprehensive plan to improve governance. It is not perfect. It reflects the real, messy politics of development, especially in newly democratic systems like Indonesia.’

Dr Mulyani knows firsthand about the difficult relationship between Indonesia and the IMF and World Bank, having been at the centre of a storm when she represented Indonesia as Executive Director at the IMF: some Indonesians accuse the IMF of having caused irreparable damage to the country in the wake of the financial crisis in 1997.

In today’s lecture ‘Challenges of globalisation for Indonesia’, the Minister will outline the big challenges now facing her country. She believes the main one is the ‘huge scepticism – huge in magnitude and scale in Indonesia – where people are exhausted by the crisis and past failures’. She will describe the old system as ‘corrupt’, and lay out a plan for building a ‘clean, effective, and efficient government’ which she hopes will command public and political support for a new direction for Indonesia.

Dr Mulyani is giving the Annual Lecture of the Global Economic Governance Programme, which is given at Oxford every year by a serving Finance Minister from an emerging or developing economy. The Global Economic Governance Programme is linked to Oxford University’s Department of Politics and International Relations and the Centre for International Studies.

Dr Mulyani has a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois and served as a member of the National Economic Council during Abdurrahman Wahid's administration. Subsequently she represented Indonesia (and 11 other countries from the region) at the IMF. Dr Mulyani taught economics at the University of Georgia before returning to her country to become Minister for Development Planning and then Finance Minister. She has become one of the foremost policy experts to guide Indonesia’s economic reforms.

A video of her lecture will go online at 8pm this evening at www.globaleconomicgovernance.org.

To arrange an interview today with Dr Mulyani, please contact Joanna Langille on 07783 704158 or contact the Press Office on 01865 280534, or email: press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk 

Notes for Editors:

* In previous years the Annual Lecture of the Global Economic Governance Programme has been given by Trevor Manuel, the Finance Minister of South Africa; Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Finance Minister of Nigeria; Dr Youssef Boutros-Ghali, Finance Minister of Egypt; and Dr Montek Singh Ahluwahlia from India’s Planning Commission. 

 * The Global Economic Governance Programme was established in 2003 at Oxford University by Dr Ngaire Woods. It conducts research into how global markets and institutions can better serve people in developing countries. Over the past five years it has worked with a huge range of international scholars, policy-makers, business leaders, and NGOs.  Its research has been informing scholarly and policy debates about the reform of the IMF and World Bank; effective foreign aid; the World Trade Organisation; global health priorities; and the global governance of migration. 

 

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