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Govt urged to watch development targets amid budget cuts
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Alleviating poverty — A local resident cleans up around railway tracks passing through a dense settlement in Petamburan, Central Jakarta, on July 19. Central Statistics Agency (BPS) head Suryamin said the number of poor people in Indonesia had reached 28.01 million, 10.86 percent of the total population, as of March 2016. ( ANTARA FOTO/M Agung Rajasa)
T
he House of Representatives is calling on the Finance Ministry to keep an eye on Indonesia’s development targets despite the truncation of funds in the revised 2016 state budget.
House lawmaker Melchias Markus Mekeng said the ministry should ensure the smooth distribution of regional transfers and village funds so that there would be no liquidity hurdles in the regions.
“House Commission XI [overseeing finance and banking] has agreed to establish a working committee on regional transfers and village funds,” the commission’s chairman said during a meeting with Finance Ministry officials in Jakarta on Wednesday.
As reported earlier, the government has decided to trim its budget by Rp 137 trillion (US$10.31 billion), comprising Rp 65 trillion from budgets for ministries and non-ministerial government institutions and Rp 72 trillion in regional transfers. The budget cuts will likely lead to a delayed distribution of regional transfers and village funds.
“To save government spending, Commission XI has also urged the Finance Ministry to use a sharing scheme, in which the central government and local administrations share burdens proportionally,” said Melchias.
Poverty alleviation is one of several development targets that the government is working on, along with a lower unemployment rate and gini ratio and human development index improvements.
In the revised state budget, the government aims to reduce Indonesia’s poverty level and unemployment rate to 10.6 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the gini ratio is expected to improve to 0.39. (ebf)
