City slammed over revised budget draft

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The Indonesian Budget Transparency Forum (Fitra) questioned on Wednesday the upward revision to the draft 2005 budget to Rp 14 trillion (US$1.5 billion) from the initially proposed Rp 13.83 trillion.

"If the administration is professional in their work, there shouldn't be any significant changes to the draft budget," Arif Nur Alam, a senior analyst at Fitra, told The Jakarta Post.

Arif added that the revision might prompt suspicions on possible irregularities in the budget, particularly in city revenue and spending.

The administration announced on Tuesday that it would increase its projected budget for next year without providing an explanation for the additional funds.

Arif said the change showed that: one, the administration was not professional in calculating the projected revenue; and two, a possibility that certain parties in the administration may have submitted a poorly developed draft budget for their own benefit.

He said the second suspicion was based on a study Fitra conducted in 2002, which found that draft budgets frequently provided revenue projections that were much lower than the actual potential.

For example, Arif said the administration had submitted a projected revenue of Rp 400 billion from hotel and restaurant taxes, but Fitra's study showed that the sector's potential revenue reached Rp 700 billion.

Projected revenue for the street parking and bus terminal sector was also extremely low at Rp 2 billion, far from its potential revenue of Rp 16 billion.

"Unfortunately, the councillors are not aware of the possible irregularities," he said, adding that "certain parties" in the administration might take advantage of the fact that many councillors are new to politics. -- JP