Andreas D. Arditya, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 12/18/2010 1:19 PM
The City Council approved on Friday the Rp 27.95 trillion (US$3.1 billion) 2011 city budget proposed by Governor Fauzi Bowo.
This represents a slight increase from this year’s budget of Rp 26.71 trillion.
The largest chunk of the budget, 28.9 percent or Rp 8.06 trillion, is supposed to go to education, increasing from this year’s Rp 7.08 trillion.
Another 24 percent of the budget, or Rp 6.88 trillion, is earmarked for public services.
The city also allocated Rp 4.57 trillion, or 16.4 percent, for housing and public facilities.
Despite early criticism, councilors also agreed on Rp 3.89 trillion for mitigating worsening traffic congestion and floods.
The council was expected to endorse the budget in late November and after protracted negotiations, the council approved it in a plenary session on Friday.
In the new budget, the city expects to get Rp 25.52 trillion in revenue and spend Rp 27.3 trillion, leaving it with a Rp 1.78 trillion deficit.
The administration proposed using Rp 2.4 trillion from the 2010 budget to offset the deficit.
The budget was set with the expectation that next year’s
economic growth would be between 6 percent and 7 percent, higher than the national target
of between 6 percent and 6.3 percent. Inflation for 2011 is expected to hit between 5 percent and 6
percent.
The administration planned to collect Rp 11.98 trillion from local taxes and retribution and Rp 10.75 trillion from tax revenue shared by the central government.
Unlike the tense deliberation process, the plenary session to endorse the budget went smoothly without interruptions from councilors.
The council had criticized the governor over the proposed budget, saying the administration did not have adequate plans to handle Jakarta’s worsening floods and traffic congestion.
Councilors said they were pessimistic that the Rp 3.89 trillion earmarked for solving the two problems would be enough.
Fauzi later threatened to use funds from the 2010 budget after denouncing what he called the sluggish pace of deliberations at the City Council, referring to councilors as “dimwits”.
Deputy Governor Prijanto also attacked the council earlier this week for removing important items from the proposed budget.
“What matters at the end is that the budget was approved by both the administration and the council,” Fauzi said after the plenary meeting.
Fauzi also pledged that he and city agencies including the city secretariat, development planning agency and the financial management agency would work hard on the details of the budget draft after Friday’s endorsement.
“We need to submit the budget bylaw draft to the Home Ministry to be approved as a bylaw by the end of December,” he said.
The new budget is expected to come into effect on Jan. 2.
