A realistic state budget

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