Shortly after taking office, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell illuminated need for higher communication of monetary policy. It could learn a thing or two from Indonesia.
Bank Indonesia has about 644,000 Twitter followers, probably the most of any central bank. The nearly 14,500 tweets include updates on exchange rates and inflation, award shows and even a joke music video explaining methods to spot counterfeit notes. A visit by Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, in February sparked a flood of posts.
Bank Indonesia spokesman Agusman, who like many Indonesians uses the identical surname, said policymakers realised that using social media had turn into a necessity given the country’s large millennial population.
“With social media, we can break down communication barriers and also communicate with style,” he said. The bank has pledged to make its content more “engaging and shareable” and “most importantly, go viral.”
But it isn’t nearly clicks.
Social media is an efficient option to communicate with greater than 260 million Indonesians scattered across an archipelago of hundreds of islands stretching from New York to London.
BI’s proactive communication reflects a hands-on approach where employees work with the police to disrupt criminal gangs chili cartels within the oil-booming city of Balikpapan, or buy owls to scare away rats from the Banyuwangi fields.
Indonesians are very energetic social media users. There are over 24 million of them Twitter accounts ranks third after the United States and India, in accordance with market and consumer data provider Statista, and boasts a population of around 90 million Facebook accounts.
The willingness of Indonesian policymakers to interact with web users stands in contrast to the reasonably dull lists of speech transcripts and balance sheet updates that constitute the official news channels of the Banco de Mexico and the Federal Reserve, which rank second and third respectively when it comes to followers.
The bank didn’t limit itself to contact via Twitter, but published a post with the hashtag SobatRupiah (FriendsofRupiah), inviting its followers to go to the bank’s offices as well.
Source : Bloomberg
