DPR Budget Committee Chair Urges Government to Resolve Decile Data Controversy

The Chairman of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR) Budget Committee, Said Abdullah, has urged the government to immediately resolve issues regarding the accuracy of decile data for subsidy recipients to address ongoing inclusion and exclusion errors. This was stated by Said during a Working Committee (Panja) meeting of the DPR Budget Committee alongside the government and Bank Indonesia at the Parliament Complex, Senayan, Jakarta, on Thursday (3/9).

Said highlighted the frequent cases of misdirected subsidies, where eligible poor communities are removed from recipient lists, while wealthier groups continue to enjoy subsidies. He assessed that the validity of data, ranging from the Integrated Social Welfare Data (DTKS) to the National Single Social and Economic Data (DTSN), requires fundamental improvements.

“Those entitled to receive do not receive it, because they should be in decile three, but suddenly their decile is nine. Those entitled do not receive, and those not entitled do receive. This is a major problem that makes the term ‘on target’ become biased,” said Said.

To overcome this issue, the PDI Perjuangan politician encouraged the government to utilise more modern verification technologies, such as the use of biometric fingerprint or retina identification for aid recipients.

In addition to the data issue, Said also questioned the effectiveness and relevance of energy compensation budgets for the industrial sector. He urged the government to study the possibility of reallocating such compensation budgets to strengthen direct subsidies for the lower class of society.

“Are our industries still worthy of receiving compensation? If they are, then there is something that needs to be evaluated in terms of efficiency. What we want to ensure is that subsidies are truly received by those entitled to them,” Said emphasised.

Responding to the criticism, the government explained that the DTSN is continuously updated through data integration from ministries, agencies, local governments, ground checks, and public proposal-rebuttal mechanisms. As of 10 July 2026, DTSN version 3 was recorded to cover 290.13 million individual data points and 95.98 million family data points to minimise potential data errors.