Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The government will spur the spending of state budget funds to boost economic growth, Sjahrial Loetan, the secretary of the state minister for national development planning, said here on Monday.
"We will push the use of state budget funds which so far has not been maximal," he said.
He said the trend in budget spending kept improving but it seemed to remain slow. He said the absorption was still around 92-95 percent.
He said budget use particularly for physical development projects should reach 10 to 15 percent in the first quarter and 30 to 50 percent in the second quarter, 50 to 75 percent in the third and 100 percent in the fourth quarter.
He said there were minimally three steps the government could do to push budget spending namely conducting the tender for government projects before the start of the new fiscal year with the contract to be signed only later after the budget for approved projects is disbursed.
The other steps are appointing competent persons to carry out procurement for the government projects and assuring that tenders produce quality contractors.
He said the portion for physical development projects reached 80 percent of the budget while the rest 20 percent going to social projects and various training activities.
The chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry`s (Kadin) permanent commission for inter-regional relations, Herman Heru Suprobo, meanwhile said that it would still be difficult to spur budget use until 10 to 15 percent in the first quarter this year because a lot of central and regional policies are still overlapping.
"Frankly, we are not sure the government will be able to achieve its goal unless the overlapping problem is not solved. We are predicting budget use in the first quarter of 2010 will maximally reach only eight percent," he said.(*)
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