Home Affairs Minister: Local Governments Must Streamline Budgets Before Requesting Additional Funds

Minister of Home Affairs Tito Karnavian stated that local governments must first streamline their respective budget items before submitting requests for additional funds to the central government. He revealed that he is already aware of regions genuinely experiencing budget constraints and has coordinated the matter with the Ministry of Finance. However, he has not yet detailed which regions are involved or the amount of additional budget required. “If there are proposals, send a letter to us so we can add a top-up, no. We will first open up, we will dissect the regional financial condition and announce it to the public,” Tito said after a meeting with Commission II of the Indonesian House of Representatives at the parliament complex in Jakarta on Thursday. He cited the example of budget issues in East Nusa Tenggara, where the local government claimed a shortfall. After deploying a team to review and dissect the region’s spending, it was found that several budget items, such as operational spending, could be streamlined. The same approach was applied to the Tidore City Government, which had recently been in the spotlight over plans to furlough civil servants due to budget limitations. “We sent a team there, the Director General of Regional Finance dissected the operational spending, and it turned out it could be streamlined and used for expenditure,” Tito said. He added that Tidore also had outstanding Revenue Sharing Funds from the Ministry of Finance. Once the efficiency measures were implemented and the funds disbursed, the issue regarding salaries for Government Employees with Work Agreements was resolved. “We will be very careful. We don’t want regions to think, ‘Oh, because there will be a top-up later, we can just take it easy.’ No, no,” he stressed.