Bank Indonesia Governor Destry Damayanti argued at the Bangkok meetings that trading in local currencies reduces reliance on third currencies and limits exposure to global exchange-rate swings, shifting emerging-market defense from dollar stockpiles toward rerouted trade and payment systems.

Indonesia’s Local Currency Transaction volumes reached $8.45 billion in early 2026, up 163 percent year-on-year, with QRIS interoperability enabling direct regional settlement that can ease dollar demand and give the central bank more domestic policy space.

The article notes remaining constraints—thin liquidity, limited awareness among small exporters, and data/cyber risks—while contending that such “plumbing” can reduce the frequency of imported shocks more effectively than reserves alone.

I followed the Bangkok meetings, held October 12 to 18, mostly through the statements trickling out of them, and the tone was about as cheerful as you’d expect. The Fed might hike again. Oil keeps refusing to come down. And money still has a habit of bolting out of emerging markets the moment someone in New York gets nervous. None of it is new. Yet one of the more consequential messages of the week didn’t come from a headline communiqué. It came from a fairly technical point made by Bank Indonesia Governor Destry Damayanti: trading in local currencies cuts reliance on a third currency and limits exposure to global exchange-rate swings.

That sounds modest. It isn’t. What she described is a shift in how emerging economies think about defense. For decades the standard playbook was to stockpile dollars and hope the pile was big enough when the storm arrived. What’s taking shape now is something closer to defensive plumbing, rerouting the pipes of everyday trade and payments so that fewer shocks reach the domestic economy in the first place.

Why The Timing Matters

The case for this plumbing has rarely been stronger, and Indonesia’s own week shows why. Back home, the talk on trading desks is whether Bank........

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