2005 budget draft to be unveiled next month
2005 budget draft to be unveiled next month
Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Minister of Finance Boediono said on Monday that the current
administration would submit to the House of Representatives the
draft of the 2005 state budget on May 5 for deliberation.
Boediono said that legislators were expected to start debating
the proposed budget once the current recess period ended early
next month.
"We'll submit the basic (economic) assumptions for the 2005
budget to the House on May 5," he told reporters, but declined to
provide details.
Other ministry officials, however, have previously said that
the state budget deficit next year was projected to further
decline to 1 percent of gross domestic product (compared to the
2004 estimated deficit of 1.2 percent of GDP), while public debt
level is expected to fall to around 60 percent of GDP.
The government has argued that the early deliberation of the
2005 budget is crucial because the upcoming new government (to be
formed in November) would not have sufficient time to make the
budget that would be effective starting January next year.
More over, the provincial governments need the state budget to
be completed two months before it becomes effective to allow them
to make adjustment in their budget.
The country's recently elected legislators will start to work
in October, while the new president will be sworn in November,
followed by the forming of a new cabinet.
Elsewhere, Boediono said that the state budget was projected
to reach an equilibrium (a zero percent deficit) in 2006.
"In may opinion an equilibrium can be reached in 2006. But it
will all depend on the new government," Boediono said.
Separately, a senior official said on Monday that the
government managed to generate during the first three months of
this year 23 percent of its targeted revenue for the 2004 state
budget.
The current standing would therefore keep the budget on track
as the government has set for the whole year a target of Rp 349.9
trillion (US$41 million) in revenue, mostly from taxes.
"Revenue from value added taxes, land and building taxes, and
income tax from the oil and gas sector was slightly higher than
expected, but revenue from income tax from the non-oil and gas
sector was slightly below expectations," head of the Ministry of
Finance's fiscal analysis body, Anggito Abimanyu, told reporters.
Anggito, however, declined to reveal the current standing of
the budget deficit or how much the government had spent during
this year's first quarter.
"Expenditure is still small as many funding disbursements for
subsidies and development projects have not started yet," he said
briefly.
The government is expecting to spend Rp 374.4 trillion for the
2004 budget year.