Who Is Sri Mulyani Indrawati? Indonesia’s Finance Minister Appoints New Head of Customs and Excise

Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesia’s Minister of Finance, has named the retired Lieutenant General Djaka Budhi Utama to lead the country’s customs and excise office. Utama was previously implicated in kidnapping human rights advocates, which elicited condemnation from human rights organisations. Further apprehension stemmed from the uncertainty surrounding his military rank, as Indonesian law prohibits military officers from accepting certain posts in civil society, including at the Finance Ministry. Nevertheless, during the official swearing in of Utama, he was presented as a retired officer and therefore met the legal requirements to assume responsibility in the office.

At the same time, Bimo Wijayanto, a senior-level civil servant who had worked at the tax office, investment ministry and the presidential chief of staff’s office, was appointed as the new head of the tax office.

Born on August 26, 1962, in Bandar Lampung, Indonesia, Sri Mulyani Indrawati is a distinguished economist. She received her bachelor of economics from the University of Indonesia in 1986. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992. Her career has included serving as Indonesia’s finance minister from 2005 to 2010 and again from 2016 onwards, with a gap period during which time she was the managing director of the World Bank Group from 2010 to 2016.

Sri Mulyani, who was known as a reformist, has played a key role in bolstering Indonesia’s economy, increasing investment and steering Southeast Asia’s largest economy past the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession. Her most recent appointments suggest persistent efforts to improve the country’s financial institutions, though not without public objection and scrutiny.