Cabinet meeting discusses budget saving

Seemingly annoyed with recent media reports highlighting state officials' excessive use of state budgets, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono held Thursday a plenary Cabinet meeting specially discussing budget saving.

Speaking at the opening of the meeting at Bogor State Palace, Yudhoyono said he had asked his staff responsible for the management of Presidential Palace and the State Secretariat to do the saving.

He also asked his Cabinet ministers to apply the same thing in institutions they led.

"I'm sure local administrations; provincial and regency/municipal administrations can do similarly. And I've talked about this issue with leaders of other state institutions, including the People's Consultative Assembly, the House of Representatives...calling for them to efficiently use state budget," the President said.

Yudhoyono had raised the budget saving issue a few times in his speeches since local media reported the Presidential Palace as biggest spender of the state budget for foreign work visit and that the President himself allegedly received almost Rp 1 billion a year for his outfits only.

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Hatta Rajasa had defended the foreign visit spending, saying it was inevitable, while the President himself quickly denied the so-called huge outfit spending.