T

he Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4) announced on Monday that the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry was the ministry with the lowest rate of budget utilization for the second year in a row.

Based on data released by UKP4'€™s Budget Spending Monitoring and Evaluation Team, the energy ministry spent only 7.52 percent of its budget in the first half of the 2014 budget year; Rp 15 trillion (US$1.25 billion), or 92.48 percent of its total budget remains unspent.

'€œThe energy ministry is among the ministries with the largest budget allocations in 2014, but sadly it is also the ministry with the lowest budget absorption,'€ said UKP4 head Kuntoro Mangkusubroto.

Deputy Finance Minister Anny Ratnawati said the energy ministry should take the data into consideration because it was the second time in a row the ministry came bottom of the list in the budget-utilization rating.

'€œThis is the second time. They should pay attention to the problem and fix it,'€ Anny told reporters on the sidelines of a national meeting on financial governance in Jakarta on Monday.

Anny hoped that the ministry could improve its budget-absorption rate by the end of the year suggesting that a planning process would facilitate a better result.

Kuntoro said the low budget-utilization rating at the energy ministry would have a negative impact on the public.

He suspected that the most likely reason for the ministry'€™s poor performance was the large number of ministry projects that were executed without a thorough planning process.

'€œFor example, there is a transmission project in Central Java in which the planning process was so poor there were lots of technical issues and problems with implementation. That kind of thing hampers the absorption of their large budget,'€ Kuntoro said.

Spokesman for the energy ministry, Saleh Abdurahman, said he was aware of the ministry'€™s low level of budget usage. He said a number of factors external to the ministry could be blamed for such a low budget absorption.

'€œExternal factors such as land disputes with local people in the power-plant construction areas are beyond our control,'€ Saleh said, adding that such disputes were one of the main reasons the development of some projects was so slow.

He said the energy ministry would inaugurate several energy-related projects in Cepu, Central Java, in October. '€œThis is proof that we are always trying to meet the budget-absorption target,'€ he said.

As one of the ministries receiving the highest proportion of the state budget, the energy ministry is considered one of the most corruption-prone. Earlier this month the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) named Jero Wacik, then energy and mineral resources minister, a graft suspect.

Also on Monday, the UKP4 declared the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) to be the highest-spending state institution, absorbing 43.21 percent of its 2014 budget in the first six months, while the Finance Ministry was the highest-spending ministry, disbursing 38.04 percent of its budget. (idb)