As the economy becomes increasingly difficult, Southeast Asian central bankers are turning to Facebook and YouTube to assist get their messages across.
This Bank of Thailand was the last to adopt a streaming version of its monetary policy announcement in August, three months after the Philippine central bank itself did so.
Bank Indonesia, which has more Twitter followers than the Federal Reserve, recently stepped up its posting of policy decisions to once a month.
“Communication is intensified because Governor Perry believes that transparency and communication are integral to how the central bank strengthens the credibility of its policies,” said Agusman, a central bank spokesman who goes by one name.
“The main target group of the live broadcast is market participants, banks, scientists and economists who directly need complete information from the central bank,” he said.
“But in practice, the live broadcasts are also watched by students, young people and Internet users who generally want to learn.”
Central bankers are using social media to calm markets and explain their decisions more on to households reeling from currency turmoil and rising prices.
Of the region’s five major central banks – Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia – only the Bank of Thailand has not yet tightened policy this 12 months.
“The message has definitely become clearer, stronger, and the company is delivering on that,” said Priyanka Kishore, head of India and Southeast Asia economics at Oxford Economics Ltd. in Singapore.
“Part of it is education” for most of the people, while for the promote it’s about “forming opinions and influencing analysts’ decisions.”
Malaysia and Singapore have traditionally only released statements about their policy decisions, but the opposite five Southeast Asian central banks have switched to video streaming.
Source : Bloomberg
