T

he government is accelerating the disbursement of funds for the development of road and other infrastructure facilities to ensure that the spending on such major projects will help stimulate the country'€™s sluggish economy.

Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said on Thursday that the ministry contracts for the development of large infrastructure projects had been signed, paving the way for the quick disbursement of their budgets.

Basuki said the ministry'€™s 2015 budget realization had reached 33.4 percent as of Thursday, or Rp 39 trillion (US$2.75 billion) of the total Rp 118.5 trillion allocated for the ministry. The ministry is aiming for a budget disbursement of 93 percent by the end of this year.

'€œWe expect to record a disbursement of 44 percent by the end of September and 56 percent by the end of October,'€ Basuki told reporters after chairing a meeting on the acceleration of the 2015 budget at his office.

The government hopes that the spending on the infrastructure projects will help boost the economy, which grew only 4.67 percent in the second quarter of this year, the lowest level in six years.

Basuki argued that the low level of budget spending was normal given that the 2015 revised state budget was only approved by the House of Representatives in April and the ministry could only start to disburse the allocated funds in May.

'€œIn addition, we also had to deal with the change in the ministry'€™s nomenclature and structure due to the merger between the public works and public housing ministries during the first months of the administration,'€ Basuki said.

Separately, the ministry'€™s Bina Marga director general Hediyanto W. Husaini, who oversees the construction and maintenance of the national road network, said that the government'€™s multiyear project licensing mechanism was too time-consuming, hampering the ministry'€™s budget disbursement.

Hediyanto said that out of the total Rp 56 trillion budget allocated for the directorate general this year, 34 percent of the budget had been disbursed as of early September. This percentage, according to Hediyanto, will escalate by 10 percent within a month.

The ministry has also begun construction of eight dams of the 13 planned to be built this year.

Last week, the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry launched an early tender process for 61 road projects across 15 provinces, worth Rp 3.7 trillion, included in the 2016 state budget bill. The Transportation Ministry has also unveiled plans to conduct an early tender release for its 2016 projects.

Hediyanto said that with the acceleration, the ministry hoped to disburse at least 10 percent of the allocated budget worth Rp 16.7 trillion.

In an attempt to expedite state budget disbursement next year, several ministries will launch early tender processes for 2016 projects as the government'€™s poor spending this year has been criticized as failing to help promote growth in a slowdown.

In the 2016 state budget bill the budget allocation for Bina Marga amounted to Rp 46.2 trillion, of which Rp 28.3 trillion would be used to finance new road projects and the remaining Rp 17.9 trillion allocated for road maintenance and office expenditure.