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resident-elect Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo denied a rumor on Sunday that a rift had occurred between him and his deputy Jusuf Kalla over the structure of the incoming Cabinet.

'€œHow is that possible? We meet and talk with each other every day. We are both on good terms,'€ Jokowi, who is slated to be sworn in as the country'€™s seventh president on Oct. 20, said in Jakarta.

Jokowi said that as of Sunday he had not engaged in talks with either Kalla or members of his coalition on who would fill positions in his future administration, saying that such discussions would only take place after he was sworn in as president on Oct. 20.

'€œThere has been no talk yet either with Pak JK [Kalla] or coalition members. How the administration will look has also yet to be defined, whether it will include 30, 34 or just 20 ministries,'€ said Jokowi.

Although he denied he had a falling out with Kalla, Jokowi emphasized he had the prerogative to decide who would be in his Cabinet.

In early August Jokowi launched a transition team, the first in Indonesian history, to prepare for his future administration. It will also help manage the transfer of power from outgoing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to Jokowi.

The team, which is headed by former president director of PT Astra International and minister of trade Rini Mariani Soemarno, consists of a combination of experts and politicians tasked with devising programs to be implemented by Jokowi and Kalla during their five-year term in office.

Earlier, Kalla expressed his disagreement over the transition team'€™s plan to merge several ministries into one, adding that he also disapproved of the idea that ministers in the next administration must quit their positions in their political parties, a proposal made by Jokowi.

Kalla said it would take time to merge ministries and he and Jokowi only had a limited amount of time to realize their campaign promises.

'€œIf any change is needed, they should be minor changes. If major changes take place then many things have to be restructured, such as who are going to be the directorate generals and where the new offices will be located and other things,'€ Kalla said in Jakarta on Thursday.

Currently, there are 34 ministries under the system set up by President Yudhoyono'€™s administration.

The transition team said the cabinet was too large and proposed to slash the number of ministries to 27, which it believed could save the state budget by around Rp 3.4 trillion per year.

Kalla shot back at the proposal, saying that saving that amount of money was not possible as the government would not dismiss all the officials whose ministries would be merged into other ministries, implying that despite a merger the government would still have to pay the salaries of the civil servants.

Kalla further said that merging two ministries into one would mean more civil servants would be put into a single ministry, adding that it was not easy to supervise thousands of officials under one ministry.

'€œI used to serve as industry minister, who supervised around 7,000 officials. It was not an easy job to supervise them at that time,'€ Kalla said.

Separately, transition team deputy chairman Akbar Faizal denied a suggestion that Kalla was reluctant to discuss the Cabinet structure with Jokowi because Kalla was not involved in the establishment of the team.

'€œThat'€™s not true. Pak Jokowi and Pak Kalla are the ones who control the transition team,'€ Akbar said.