TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results2026 budget ripe with politics, somewhat thinner on strategy
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Promises vs. plans: President Prabowo Subianto delivers his State of the Nation address on Friday during the annual People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) plenary meeting at the Senayan legislative complex in Jakarta. (Antara/Rivan Awal Lingga)
A
lack of satisfying answers on how to reach growth goals set forth in the freshly unveiled 2026 state budget has led economists to conclude that the fiscal document is based more on political ambition rather than on technocratic calculation.
Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) executive director Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara told The Jakarta Post on Saturday that the targets set in the budget plan “overshoot and require strenuous effort” to attain.
“It’s ripe with political aspects to fulfill the populist programs as opposed to being based on technocratic calculation, which includes fiscal discipline,” said Bhima.
One of the targets highlighted by Bhima was for gross domestic product (GDP) growth to accelerate to 5.4 percent, which he doubted the country would attain due to external pressure, sluggish global commodity markets and a lack of domestic driving forces.
The last time Indonesia registered such strong GDP growth in a full year was in 2013 with 5.56 percent, and it has mostly hovered around the 5 percent mark since.
In 2022, a full-year growth rate of 5.31 percent did get close to next year’s target, but that was largely attributed to a base effect, because it followed unusually slow growth in 2021, when the national economy was still suffering from the coronavirus pandemic shock.
The government’s 5.2 percent GDP growth target for 2025 already assumes a significant speed-up in the second half, after year-on-year (yoy) rates of 4.87 percent and 5.12 percent, respectively, in quarters one and two, yet even from that level another big step-up would be needed to reach 5.6 percent next year.
