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AKARTA: Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan denied he had aggressively run a campaign to support his presidential bid by using the state budget.

Gita said some TV ads and billboards that carried pictures of himself were put up long before he went public with his presidential bid.

'We have run the campaign for years,' Gita said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

An NGO called the Civil Society Circle (Lingkar Madani) filed a complaint with the independent committee tasked with selecting presidential candidates in the Democratic Party (PD) convention, claiming that Gita had run an illegal campaign by putting his face on a number of public service announcements to promote local goods and products.

Gita argued it was cheaper to put his face in the ads.

'It's better than hiring a model. It's cheaper this way,' he said.

Earlier, Gita said he was ready to resign from his ministerial position so he could focus on being nominated by the ruling PD for a presidential ticket.

The PD leadership said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had hinted that ministers who planned to join the primary should quit their posts so their performance would not drop.