A realistic state budget

Minister/State Secretary Moerdiono has appealed to everyone in business, government and the media to exercise restraint and not to exaggerate controversial issues in order to boost people's confidence in the rupiah.

This is indeed most important because, despite the fact that the rupiah has, according to observers at both home and abroad, already reached a level that is lower than might reasonably be expected, the fall is still continuing. Indeed, one might say the currency is now in a free fall.

If the rupiah's slide continues, our foreign loan burden will naturally exert a greater strain on the state budget. This is all the more true since the International Monetary Fund requires that the state budget allows for a surplus of one percent over gross domestic product.

It would be advisable for the government not to try to force development growth. The government must also have the courage to trim certain routine expenditures. However it should not be necessary to follow the example of Prime Minister Mahathir Muhammad, who has taken a cut in his own salary and ordered reductions in those of his country's civil servants as a token of concern over the country's economic turmoil. Indonesian civil servants receive relatively small wages that barely cover their daily needs.

What is needed is that we, at every level of society, are consistent in our common commitment to live simply.

-- Bisnis Indonesia, Jakarta