Indonesia’s central question

Touted as the next Bric country, Indonesia has avoided the worst of the financial crisis and its economy is powering ahead – but is that despite or because of a vacancy at the head of the country’s central bank? Eric Ellis investigates.

IN 1939, THE UK’s leader, Winston Churchill described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. If the canny old warhorse was around today, he might have offered a similar description of modern-day Indonesia.

This is a sprawling economy on the verge of joining the coveted Bric club of developing powerhouses – Brazil, Russia, India and China. Indeed, there is a growing body of economic opinion that the acronym should be Biic, bouncing the enigmatic Russia from the group, at least in population terms (Indonesia’s tally of 230 million people is 1.5

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