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Watchdog demands better oversight of corruption-ridden village funds
The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has documented a total of 851 cases of corruption involving village funds between 2015 and 2024. The KPK also revealed that village fund corruption is the most prevalent form of graft pertaining to the management of state finances.
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Field prep: A farmer uses a rotary plow on Oct. 5, 2023 to prepare his field for planting rice in Porame village, Sigi regency, Central Sulawesi. As of August 2023, the government had disbursed funds totaling Rp 37 trillion (US$2.4 billion) for food security programs. (Antara/Basri Marzuki)
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ndonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) has called on the government to strengthen oversight of village fund distribution as law enforcement authorities have detected hundreds of corruption cases related to the program in the decade since its initial implementation.
ICW researcher Seira Tamara said the government had a responsibility to ensure that the management of village funds upheld the principles of transparency, accountability and participation.
"So far, this has not been the case. The central government must not wash its hands of monitoring the distribution of village funds," Seira told Kompas.id in a recent interview.
She also noted that over the past decade, financial reports on village funds have been treated as mere "administrative formalities"," creating numerous opportunities for village officials to manipulate data and engage in corrupt practices.
Former president Joko "Jokowi" Widodo introduced the village fund policy in 2015 as one of his key initiatives, aimed at driving economic growth and reducing disparities across Indonesia's vast archipelago.
In the past decade, the government has allocated nearly Rp 609 trillion (US$37.5 billion) to more than 75,000 villages across the country, with Rp 71 trillion earmarked for the village fund program in the 2025 fiscal year.
The funds disbursed to each village have more than tripled over the past 10 years, rising from Rp 280 million in 2015 to between Rp 800 million and Rp 1.8 billion in 2025, depending on each village's population size and territorial area.
