Councillors' added demand stalls budget meeting
Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The city budget formulation team, consisting of councillors and administration officials, failed to finalize its work on Tuesday after negotiations became deadlocked due to demands by councillors that the allocations for their respective commissions be increased.
The team's chairwoman, Anna Rudhiantiana, admitted that councillors from the council's commissions were demanding an additional Rp 279 billion on top of the allocations that had been made so far for their commissions.
"The commissions were demanding increases for particular projects. Some projects that had never even been mentioned before were brought up the commissions," Anna, also the chairwoman of the council's budget commission, told reporters.
She said that Council Commission B for economic affairs, which has been allocated Rp 400 billion for its projects, had demanded an increase of Rp 14 billion for the acquisition of land to accommodate street vendors.
Commission D for development affairs, whose projects already account for a Rp 4 trillion chunk of the budget, asked for an increase of Rp 140 billion for the appropriation of land for low- cost apartments, while Commission E for social welfare affairs demanded an increase of Rp 125 billion, even though its projects have so far been allocated about Rp 2 trillion.
"The requested increases cannot be met as the budget will only amount to about Rp 11 trillion as was earlier mooted," said Anna, who represents the Golkar Party.
She believed that certain officials from city administration agencies and offices whose projects had been rejected by the City Development Planning Office had approached particular councillors to seek support for their projects.
"They claimed that their projects, such as the appropriation of the land for low-cost apartment and street vendors, had been approved by Sutiyoso," she said.
The team started its meetings on Saturday and, according to the council's schedule, should have completed its work on Monday. The latest delay has triggered fears that the budget might not be approved on Friday as scheduled.
However, Anna was optimistic that the budget would be approved by the council on time. "While the arrangements will not be really perfect, the budget should be approved as scheduled," she claimed.
She revealed the original budget estimate of Rp 11.05 trillion might be increased to Rp 11.075 trillion due to the dividend of Rp 25 billion paid this year by city-owned Bank DKI.
Besides the demands for increased project allocations, the delay in the final framing of the budget has been due to debate over the allocation of Rp 122 billion for the city's 85 councillors.
The councillors have rejected demands that their allocation should be significantly reduced, and in the end only agreed to a cut of Rp 4.5 billion.
They also rejected a suggestion from Sutiyoso that his gubernatorial allocation of Rp 9 billion be reduced to Rp 5 billion, saying that they would only reduce it by Rp 950 million.
Separately, Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo rejected on Tuesday the new projects that had been proposed by the council's commissions during the budget meetings.
"The governor never approved these projects as has been claimed by the councillors," Fauzi said.
Asked about the refusal of the council to cut the gubernatorial budget allocation, he said: "Although the allocation has not been reduced, we may end up not using all of it."