City only spends 25% of budget

City only spends 25% of budget

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The city council criticized on Thursday the administration's poor
performance in realizing their projects, as was indicated by
their meager spending of only 24.52 percent of the Rp 11.07
trillion (US$1.3 billion) budget in the first half of this year.

Spokesman of City Council Commission A for administrative and
legal affairs Mardjuan Bakri said an additional budget of Rp
579.44 billion proposed by the administration earlier this month
might make it even more difficult for its agencies to implement
the projects.

"And there are only a few months left for those agencies to
use the budget," Mardjuan said at the council plenary session
held to discuss the budget revision proposal.

Spokesman of Council Commission B for economic affairs
Muhammad Nakoem took a similar stance, saying that the
administration needed to push to finish the remaining projects.

"Commission B is quite pessimistic that the budget will be
used up by the end of this year," said Nakoem, without specifying
the outstanding projects.

For example, he said, the budget allocated Rp 457 billion for
economic affairs, but only Rp 108.27 billion had been spent in
the first semester.

Although Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo admitted to the sluggish
performance of the city agencies -- none had attained their
targets for the first semester -- he still expressed an optimism
that the agencies' performance would improve.

"We will optimize the remaining time as much as possible," he
told reporters at City Hall.

Fauzi claimed the difficulty lay in structural changes to the
budget, which city administration officials had not fully
understood.

In the past, the administration used a simpler budget
structure, split into revenues and spending, which were each
divided into routine and development expenditures.

Starting this year, spending was further divided into routine
and public spending. Several expenditures that used to fall under
routine spending, such as hospital maintenance, are now included
under public spending, while routine spending is restricted to
city officials' salaries.

However, spokesman of Commission D for development affairs Ali
Imran Husein said changes in the budget structure did not explain
the administration's failure to implement the various projects,
and urged the city administration to make a concrete decision on
how to realize the projects and programs as planned.

He also regretted the city agencies for proposing new projects
in the proposed budget revision, as they had not even realized
the projects targeted for the first half of 2003.

For example, the city sanitary agency had proposed an
additional Rp 34.99 billion for their budget, even though they
still had many outstanding projects.

Spokesman of Commission C for financial affairs Soebali
criticized the city audit body, which had failed to supervise the
agencies properly.

"We hope the city audit agency would be able to minimize the
leakage of budget," Soebali added, without elaborating.

Urban analysts earlier said nearly 30 percent of the budget
had not been used as allotted, due to acute corruption in both
the city administration and the Council.

Chairman of Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) Azas Tigor
Nainggolan said councillors and administrative officials had
colluded in developing the budget.