Govt unlikely to revise budget despite court ruling

Govt unlikely to revise budget despite court ruling

Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is unlikely to submit a last-minute revision to
the 2006 state budget to satisfy a Constitutional Court ruling
on the allocation of money for education, with the draft budget
already in final deliberations at the House of Representatives
ahead of expected approval this week.

State Minister for National Development Planning Sri Mulyani
Indrawati said on Monday that for the time being the government
was satisfied leaving the matter to the House for any later
revisions.

"We will just leave it at that and see later on," she said.

The government usually submits a revision of the state budget
to the House for approval after a midyear assessment.

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Aburizal Bakrie said
previously the government might consider revising the draft
budget to allocate more money for social and development programs
-- including education -- at the cost of a widening budget
deficit.

The Constitutional Court ruled last week in a judicial review
of the National Education Law that the government must allocate
at least 20 percent of the state budget for education, in
accordance with the 1945 Constitution. The court also ruled that
the allocation should take effect immediately, rather than
through gradual increases.

The government had earlier presented to House Commission XI
for financial affairs a scheme in which it would gradually
increase the education budget by an average of 3 percent each
year, until it reached 20.1 percent of the total budget in 2009.

For the 2006 state budget, the government has proposed Rp 31.3
trillion for the education sector, from Rp 375 trillion in total
planned expenditures. The proposed budget is being deliberated by
the House for approval in a plenary session on Oct. 27.

Commenting on the court's ruling, legislators and analysts
doubted the feasibility of its implementation due to the current
limitations on the state budget to finance programs.

Though agreeing with the court's ruling and praising the
benefits it would have on the education sector, economist Faisal
Basri of the University of Indonesia said the real problem was
with the Constitution.

"There is perhaps no other constitution in the world that
places such an inflexible requirement on the government," he
said.

The head of the Budget Committee's working team for budgetary
spending, Achmad Hafiz Zawawi, said the committee had held
lengthy discussions on whether the 20 percent allocation for
education would be based on the Rp 350 trillion in total budget
expenditures or just on the expenditures for the country's human
resource development programs and state agencies.

In the end, Hafiz said, the committee would likely agree to
base the allocation on the Rp 180 trillion allocated for state
agencies.

"That is more appropriate for the current budget and easier to
measure as well as monitor," he said.