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Roundup: Indonesian president urges ministers to boost budget spending

Xinhua, July 2, 2015 Adjust font size:

Indonesian President Joko Widodo ordered his ministers to improve the state budget spending in their ministry so as to materialize development projects allocated for this year.

As of the end of the first half of the year, total expenditure spent by the government was only stood at 650 trillion rupiah ( about 48.9 billion U.S. dollars), or 35 percent from this year's overall state budget, according the data released by the financial ministry.

As the president has regarded that budget spending improvement is a crucial issue, Coordinating Minister for Economy Affairs Sofyan Djalil said particular teams would be assigned to check on problems faced by the ministries that made them sluggish in using the spending.

Sofyan also said ministers were told to quickly hold tenders to carry out development projects, assuring the projects would be free from legal hurdles in the future.

Furthermore, Sofyan said the president also warned regional leaders to be supportive in addressing projects initiated by the ministries.

"If they fail to provide a quick permission to commence the projects, central government would take over their authority in doing so," Sofyan told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting held here on Thursday.

Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said the sluggish spending was caused by unsettled administration problem in the new ministries formed by the president.

"The president asked us to speed up the spending as now has entered the second half period. If the spending was not conducted properly, it would risk the nation's growth," Bambang said.

He added that ministries registered to have low spending among others the Lagged Region and Transmigration, Industry and Trade ministries.

Bambang was optimistic that 92 percent of the state budget would be spent at the end of the year. Indonesia's state budget was approved at 2,039 trillion rupiah(about 153 billion U.S. dollars) by the parliament last year.

Indonesian government has set a growth target of 5.8 percent this year, or fit with prediction of Asian Development Bank which revised its target estimation initially set at 6 percent for Indonesia. Endi