‘World’s Best Minister’ Sri Mulyani Indrawati returns to Indonesia to hero’s welcome

Indonesian President Joko Widodo congratulate Finance Minister Sri Mulyani for being named as the best minister in the world. (Photo via Rahmat/Setkab.go.id)

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati received the congratulations of Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday after returning from the World Government Summit in Dubai, where she won the “Best Minister” award.
Indrawati is the third recipient of the award, after Senegal’s Minister of Health and Social Action Awa Marie Coll-Seck in 2017 and Australian Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt in 2016.
Widodo was full of praise for Sri Mulyani at a Cabinet meeting at the State Palace.
“First of all, I would like to congratulate Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati who has been awarded as the best minister — the only best minister in the world,” Widodo said, walking over to Indrawati to shake her hand.
“This acknowledgment shows that management of our macroeconomic, fiscal, and state budget is on the right track, prudent and very effective,” Widodo told journalists earlier in the day at the Foreign Ministry.
Widodo’s administration has set an economic growth target of 5.4 percent in 2018.
Vice Chairman of the National Economic and Industry Committee Arif Budimanta congratulated Indrawati on her award and told Arab News that it also served as a challenge to ensure that Indonesia’s development would result in the creation of more jobs for the country’s youth.
Between 2025 and 2035, Indonesia’s young, working-age demographic is expected to outstrip the number of children and the elderly.
“We should be able to work harder to address inequality and reduce the development gap between the western and eastern regions of the country,” Budimanta added.
Enny Sri Hartati, an economist and director of Jakarta-based think tank, the Institute for the Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) said that Indrawati’s reform efforts had not been wholly successful.
“Our fiscal sector in the past three years has been in decline and our tax ratio has been low, at around 10 percent,” she told Arab News.
Enny acknowledged the reforms that Indrawati has introduced but stressed that what outcomes are what matter, not just efforts.
According to data from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, at less than 11 percent, Indonesia has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in Southeast Asia and emerging economies. Neighboring countries Thailand and Malaysia are at around 17 percent and 15 percent respectively.
Widodo brought Indrawati back to Jakarta as finance minister in July 2016 in his second cabinet reshuffle. She had served the same role under Widodo’s predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono from 2005 to 2010, before becoming managing director of the World Bank Group.
Indrawati has previously received numerous global awards for her efforts, including Best Finance Minister in 2006 from Euromoney, and Best Finance Minister in Asia on the sidelines of the World Bank and IMF Annual Meeting in Singapore that same year.
She is also a regular on the Forbes’ list of Most Powerful Women in the World — she was ranked 37th in 2016 having peaked at 23rd in 2008.
In an online video message posted on Sunday, Indrawati said she dedicated the award to all Indonesians, including the 78,164 finance ministry officers whom she said had worked hard to manage the country’s finances with integrity and commitment.
“The Finance Ministry has launched various policy-reform efforts aimed to (create) a fiscal policy toward sustainable and inclusive development,” she said in the video.