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.
‘World’s Best Minister’ Sri Mulyani Indrawati returns to Indonesia to hero’s welcome
‘World’s Best Minister’ Sri Mulyani Indrawati returns to Indonesia to hero’s welcome
Trump urges Iranian Kurds to attack Iran as war widens
- Azerbaijan preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday
- The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka
DUBAI/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened, with Azerbaijan warning it would retaliate for being targeted by Iranian missiles.
Israel on Friday said it had started a “broad-scale” wave of attacks against infrastructure targets in Tehran, as Gulf cities came under renewed bombardment by Iran.
The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka where a US submarine sank an Iranian naval ship.
On the possibility of the Iranian Kurdish forces entering Iran, Trump told Reuters on Thursday: “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.”
Two Iranian drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, security sources said.
Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the western part of the country, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The Iranian Kurdish coalition of groups based on the Iran-Iraq border in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan has been training to mount such an attack in hopes of weakening the country’s military, as the United States and Israel pound Iranian targets with bombs and missiles. Trump, speaking with Reuters in a telephone interview, also said the United States must have a role in deciding who will be the next leader of Iran after airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.
“We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We’re going to have to choose that person,” he said.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the US was not expanding its military objectives in Iran, despite what Trump said about choosing the country’s next leader.
“There’s no expansion in our objectives. We know exactly what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. The attack on Iran is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little support and Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern. Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and air transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.
Azerbaijan prepares to retaliate
Azerbaijan was preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday after it said four Iranian drones crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave.
“We will not tolerate this unprovoked act of terror and aggression against Azerbaijan,” President Ilham Aliyev told a meeting of his Security Council.
Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it targeted its neighbor.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within 5 km (3 miles) of the border between the countries in a message posted on its Telegram channel in Hebrew early on Friday.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.
Us munitions full
Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads US forces in the Middle East, said during a briefing about operations that the US has enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. “Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.”
The Pentagon earlier this week said the military campaign, known as Operation Epic Fury, is focused on destroying Iran’s offensive missiles, missile production and navy, while not allowing Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
Cooper said the US had now hit at least 30 Iranian ships, including a large drone carrier that he said was the size of a World War Two aircraft carrier.
He added that B-2 bombers had in the past few hours dropped dozens of 2,000 penetrator bombs targeting deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, and that bombings were also targeting Iran’s missile production facilities.
Iran’s ballistic missile attacks had decreased by 90 percent since the first day of the war, while drone attacks had decreased by 83 percent in that time frame, he said. In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the first day of the war. Another 77 have been killed in Lebanon, its Health Ministry says. Thousands fled southern Beirut on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave.
