Cabinet Reshuffle Will Improve Government's Performance

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - The replacement of six ministers on Wednesday is expected to improve the performance of the government, according to Vice President Jusuf Kalla.

"They should do their jobs better, conduct better coordination, and be focused and clear about the steps they need to take," he said after attending the inauguration of a number of new ministers.

The replacement of a number of coordinating ministers in the economic and maritime fields is expected to help improve the condition of the country's economy, which is now witnessing a downward trend.

The vice president also pointed out that Indonesia's economic slowdown was mostly a result of external factors, or influences from other countries. "So it cannot be said that the slowdown was caused by the poor performance of the cabinet ministers. Yet, we want better performance," Kalla remarked.

He further noted that the three new coordinating ministers should give priority to improving coordination among relevant ministers, having clear focus and implementing steps to improve the economic condition in their respective fields.

President Joko Widodo reshuffled his working cabinet on Wednesday by installing six new ministers.  
Sofyan Djalil replaced Andrinof Chaniago as the national development planning minister/head of the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas).

The five other figures officially sworn in by President Joko Widodo at the State Palace here are Luhut Pandjaitan, Darmin Nasution, Pramono Anung, Rizal Ramli, and Thomas Lembong.

Panjaitan, a retired general and presidential chief of staff, replaced Tedjo Edhy Purdijanto as the coordinating minister of political, legal and security affairs, while Nasution, a former governor of Bank Indonesia, took up Djalil's previous position of the coordinating minister of economic affairs.

In addition, Ramli, who is a former coordinating minister of economic affairs and was the minister of finance under the administration of former president Abdurrahman Wahid, replaced Indroyono Susilo as the coordinating minister of maritime affairs.

Anung, a senior politician of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, replaced Andi Widjajanto as the cabinet secretary, and Lembong, a former official of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, took up the position of Rachmat Gobel as the minister of trade.

Furthermore, on the day President Joko Widodo officially inducted his new cabinet members, the weakening of the rupiah's exchange rate against the U. S. dollar continued.

In response to this trend, Governor of Bank Indonesia Agus Martowardojo stated that the weakening of the rupiah over the past few weeks had overshot.

Based on the rate set by the central bank in the Jakarta Interbank Spot Dollar Rate (JISDOR), rupiah was traded at Rp13,758 per U. S. dollar in the session on Wednesday morning, weakening by 217 points from Rp13,541 on Tuesday. (WDY)