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overnor Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has instructed his subordinates to expedite the spending of the city'€™s huge budget to avoid making reckless decisions and poor quality of work by the end of the year.

During a regular meeting with heads of agencies, sub-agencies, districts and subdistricts at City Hall, he expressed his disappointment over the fact that as of April 8, only 4.56 percent of the Rp 72 trillion (US$6.3 billion) budget had been spent.

'€œI think all of you know that the city budget has been approved. However, this April, many agencies, sub-agencies and working units have not made any significant progress in spending their own budgets. Work on it. Spend your budgets as early as possible,'€ he said.

Jokowi gave the instruction in line with the low absorption of the city'€™s budget last year and the abrupt spending of the budget only months before year'€™s end, which had resulted in the poor development of projects and procured goods.

The city spent only 86 percent of the city'€™s 2013 budget of Rp 52 trillion and a bigger part of it was spent only before year'€™s end.

'€œDo not repeat [the habit of] starting your work in November and December. The work quality was poor. Worse, we got poor quality items, resulting in troubles, such as experienced with the Transjakarta buses,'€ he said.

Jokowi said that with a big budget, the city'€™s civil servants should be careful in spending it. '€œCarefulness, ladies and gentleman. I have to repeatedly warn you to be careful. Our city budget is very big, so we have to be careful in using it. It is for your own good. I don'€™t want to hear reports on members of the administration becoming suspects,'€ he said.

He mentioned the two officials with the Transportation Agency who had been named suspects in the faulty bus case, and said that he expected the case to be the last of its kind in the city.

Through bidding, the Jakarta administration last year bought 644 Transjakarta buses from China. The city has paid Rp 400 billion for 125 buses that have been delivered. The allegation of irregularities was raised when media reports exposed the poor conditions of a number of buses that were not in line with the specifications set during the bidding. Many components on the 15 newly shipped buses '€” 10 single buses and five articulated ones '€” which were produced by China'€™s Ankai, were rusted and damaged.

Jokowi also encouraged the heads of districts and subdistricts to help optimize property tax collection by providing a thorough explanation on why property taxes had been increased. He said subdistrict and district heads knew who deserved tax incentives and should not give discounts to the wealthy.

The administration estimates that revenues from property and building taxes will surge 82.2 percent to 6.7 trillion this year from Rp 3.68 trillion last year.

Earlier, Jokowi said that this year, the administration would focus on resolving flooding and transportation issues.

The administration allocated around Rp 5.1 trillion of the budget for flood mitigation, specifically for the purpose of waterway dredging; land acquisition for reservoirs; and the construction of pump houses in Angke, West Jakarta, and Ancol, North Jakarta.

The transportation sector was allocated a budget of Rp 7.1 trillion, Rp 1 trillion of which would be used to procure around 3,000 public buses. Another Rp 450 billion will be used to acquire land on Jl. Fatmawati for the construction of mass rapid transit (MRT) lines.

Deputy Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama previously said that the administration would immediately use the money to fix potholes caused by flooding. The Public Works Agency recorded that at least 1,671 potholes were spotted around the city.

The Jakarta Health Card (KJS) and Jakarta Smart Card (KJP) programs also got a bulk of funds amounting to Rp 799.81 billion and Rp 2.05 trillion, respectively.