Sri Mulyani Indrawati Biography

Sri Mulyani Indrawati is an economist from Indonesia. She was just named Managing Director of the World Bank Group and resigned as Indonesia's Finance Minister in the Second United Indonesia Cabinet. Sri Mulyani served as Indonesia's finance minister from 2005 to 2010, and is widely recognized with boosting the Indonesian economy, raising investments, and leading Southeast Asia's largest economy through the 2007-2010 financial crisis. Forbes magazine listed her as the 65th most influential woman in the world in 2011. Sri Mulyani was born on August 26, 1962, in Tanjung Karang (now Bandar Lampung), Lampung, Sumatra. Prof. Satmoko and Retno Sriningsih, university teachers, are her parents. Her name has Javanese and Sanskrit origins. Sri means "radiance" or "diffusing light" in Javanese and is used as an honorific as well as a component of feminine names. Mulyani is derived from the term mulya, which is used to convey the notion of value. Indrawati is derived from Indra and the feminine suffix -vati. In 1986, she graduated from Universitas Indonesia. Sri Mulyani obtained her master and PhD in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992. Mulyani moved for Atlanta, Georgia, in 2001 to work as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on projects to improve Indonesian autonomy. She also spoke on the Indonesian economy as visiting professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at the Georgia State University. From 2002 to 2004, she was an executive director of the International Monetary Fund, covering 12 Southeast Asian nations. She is married to Tony Sumartono, an economist, and they have three children. She is a professional economist with no political ties. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appointed Sri Mulyani as Indonesia's Finance Minister in 2005. One of her first measures was to terminate the department's unscrupulous tax and customs officials. She has a reputation for honesty after effectively combating corruption and initiating changes at Indonesia's tax and customs agency. She was also successful in encouraging foreign direct investment in Indonesia. Indonesia got $4.6 billion in foreign direct investment in 2004, the year President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono assumed office. It garnered $8.9 billion the next year. Euromoney magazine honored her Euromoney Finance Minister of the Year in 2006, just one year after she was appointed. During her term, Indonesia saw 6.6 percent economic growth, the greatest pace since the Asian financial crisis of 1997. However, due to the worldwide economic recession, growth fell to 6% in 2008. Sri Mulyani Indrawati was appointed Coordinating Minister for the Economy in July 2008, succeeding Boediono, who was to head the central bank. Mulyani was named the 23rd most powerful woman in the world and the most powerful woman in Indonesia by Forbes Magazine in August 2008. The country's foreign exchange reserves hit an all-time high of $50 billion during her stint as Finance Minister. She supervised a decrease in public debt from 60% to around 30% of GDP, making it simpler for Indonesia to sell debt to international institutional investors. She also changed the incentive mechanisms for public workers in her ministry and began offering higher wages to tax officers deemed "clean" in order to reduce the temptation to accept bribes. For the second year in a row, Emerging Markets magazine named Sri Mulyani Asia's Finance Minister of the Year in 2007 and 2008. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was re-elected as President in 2009, and she was re-appointed as Finance Minister. While much of the globe is in recession, the Indonesian economy increased by 4.5 percent in 2009. In 2009, Indonesia was one of just three major emerging economies to expand faster than 4%. China and India are the other two. Under her leadership, the government increased the number of income taxpayers from 4.35 million to over 16 million in the previous five years, and tax collections increased by roughly 20% every year to more than Rp 600 trillion in 2010. Mulyani was selected as one of the World Bank Group's three Managing Directors on May 5, 2010. She takes over for Juan Jose Daboub, who finished his four-year tenure on June 30 after supervising 74 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, and North Africa. Her departure was perceived badly and created financial upheaval in Indonesia, with the stock exchange closing down 3.8 percent on the announcement, amid a general sell-off in Asia, and the Indonesian rupiah falling nearly 1% against the US dollar. The drop on the Indonesian stock exchange is the most severe in 17 months. The move has been termed as "Indonesia loss, and the World gain". There is considerable belief that her retirement was forced by political pressure, particularly from prominent billionaire and Golkar Party head Aburizal Bakrie. Bakrie is known to have enmity toward Mulyani due to her investigation on massive tax fraud in Bakrie Group, her refusal to prop up Bakrie's coal interests with government funds, and her refusal to state that Lapindo mud flow, which was caused by drilling of Bakrie's company, was a "natural disaster". On May 20, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appointed Agus Martowardojo, CEO of Bank Mandiri, Indonesia's largest bank, as her replacement. Right before her departure, the Legislature, led by the Golkar Party, accused Sri Mulyani of committing a felony in connection with the rescue of the medium-sized Bank Century in 2008. Critics of the bailout argue it was done without legal authorization and without establishing a capital injection was required to avert a run on other banks. The bailout cost the state 6.7 trillion rupiah ($710 million). Sri Mulyani justified the bailout as appropriate given the global economic uncertainty at the time and denied any misconduct. However, ex-Vice President Jusuf Kalla also criticized Sri Mulyani's stance. Former Vice President Jusuf Kalla, in his strongest comments yet on the contentious PT Bank Century rescue, rejected allegations by former Bank Indonesia officials that allowing the institution to collapse would have had a catastrophic impact on the country's banking system and economy. The Bank Century affair is a heist, and everyone who supports it is a robber. Kalla stated. Furthermore, all nine groups on the House of Representatives special committee concurred that there were unusual and probably fraudulent transactions, as well as indications of money laundering, throughout the bailout period beginning in November 2008. They all then stated that they lacked the ability to investigate anything further and requested that the National Police and Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) take over.

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