But Finance Minister Agus Martowardoyo complained last Thursday that, as of the end of May, only about 27.65 percent of the budget had been realized. Since the bulk of the spending consisted of operating or routine budgets such as personnel salaries, the actual government investment budget was really very small.

We expected budget disbursement could have been faster this year because the budget authorization or warrants delivered last January already stipulated the project manager, treasurer and procurement officer for each investment project in order to speed up bidding processes. On top of this, the National Public Procurement Agency had been established in charge of setting nationwide standard procurement procedures and standardized bidding documents.

Actually, then finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati had sounded the alarm as early as last April, lamenting that only 9 percent of the government investment budget had been disbursed during the first quarter. That was only about half as large as investment spending in the same period last year.

The International Monetary Fund team also warned the government of the too-low investment spending, given the key role of investment in generating growth this year.

Our biggest concern is that the delay hit mostly basic infrastructure projects under the ministries of public works and transportation. It also seemed strange that one of the main reasons cited by Minister Agus for the delay in budget implementation was the lack of certified officials for managing the public sector investment projects.  Alas, we thought this problem had been resolved with the much better preparations for budget warrants that were delivered last January.

The budget authorization or spending warrant documents were supposed to have been a breakthrough in the procedures for budget execution. But there seemed to have been no significant progress from last year which left Rp 38 trillion ($3.8 billion), or more than 20 percent of the investment budget, unspent.

The likely spending cycle this year will remain as that in previous years whereby spending on investment runs very slowly during the first half, then accelerates and reaches its peak only in the last quarter.

We find it hard to understand the acute lack of sense of urgency on the part of the government to resolve its budget execution problems, because a sound legal framework has been in place for budget formulation, execution, procurement and audit. Performance-based budgeting and medium-term expenditure frameworks have been applied this year.

 Yet more frustrating is the bitter fact that the very slow budget execution has no correlation with good budget accountability because corruption has continued to plague public sector spending, as shown by the reports of the Supreme Audit Agency and the many graft cases handled by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Obviously, the government needs to make more concerted efforts to improve the spending capacity of the line ministries and the poor budget management ability of regional administrations, which together now account for around 50 percent of the government investment budget.

Slower than estimated government investment could hold up economic growth below the target of 5.8 to 6 percent this year.

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