Indonesian Rupiah - IDR

The Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) has been the official currency in Indonesia since 1949, when the Netherlands recognized the independence of the Indonesian archipelago had been a colony since the XVII century (excluding the Japanese occupation during WWII).

While it was at first established with the basis of a certain parity with the US dollar (1USD=3.8 IDR), an important inflation forced to do drastic successive devaluations of the Indonesian Rupiah ( 1USD= 11.4 IDR in 1952, then 1USD=45 IDR in 1959 and 1 USD= 415IDR in 1971).

The recurrent devaluations lasted until 1997, under the authority of the dictator Soeharto (from 1968 to 1998).

During this period, Indonesia clearly grew at an economic level, ad its raw material exports (farms overall) were favored because of the successive devaluations.

In 1986, 1 US dollar was exchanged against 1664 Rupiah, and in June 1997 against 2350 Rupiah.

The Asian crisis of 1997-1998 (that begun in Thailand) made the Indonesian Rupiah lost several times 100% of its external value against the dollar, as USD/IDR = 16800 in June 1998.

Under the control of the Central bank of Indonesia, the situation got slowly better from 2001.

Freely floating on the Forex, the Indonesian Rupiah oscillated between USD/IDR = 8500 and USD/IDR = 10000 between January 2005 and September 2008; but a clear appreciation of the dollar was ineluctable during the financial storm of the Fall of 2008, which made at the same time the raw material exchange rate collapse on the world markets.

The central bank of Indonesia directly intervened in vain on the Forex in October 2008 to defend its currency ( $7 billion on the $57 billion of the reserved it had at disposal), and the USD/IDR cross reached USD/IDR=12000 in March 2009. 

An adjustment intervened in favor of the Indonesian Rupiah, the USD/IDR was at USD/IDR=9445 in November 2009.