House tells govt to improve budget monitoring system

JAKARTA (JP): The House of Representatives urged the government on Wednesday to ensure transparency and tight monitoring of budget spending in the 1999/2000 fiscal year in order to prevent leakage of public funds.

Legislators in the House's Commission VIII for state budget and finance said that the prudent state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins in April, would be useless if the government did not tightly monitor its spending.

The spokesman for the Indonesian Democratic Party's faction in the House, Nico Daryanto, said government officials who personally profited from lucrative and collusive deals in the past should not repeat such practices.

"Let's open our eyes to our biggest challenge: the men behind the gun," Nico said during a hearing of the commission, which was attended by finance minister Bambang Subianto.

"No matter how good we are, if the men behind the gun are incapable, undisciplined and have the characteristics of criminals, we will never achieve our goals," he stated.

The government should create a monitoring system and enact disciplinary actions for any defaults, he added.

In a move which was never seen during the 32-year autocratic regime of former president Soeharto, the House revised the draft budget proposed by the government in January. The revisions include a 15 percent to 50 percent salary increase for civil servants and changes in other expenditures.

These changes will increase the budget for the next fiscal year to Rp 219.6 trillion from the Rp 218.2 trillion initially proposed by the government.

In the past, the House merely rubber-stamped the annual budget after a few weeks of perfunctory debates.

The government agreed to lower its budget appropriation for the bank recapitalization program to Rp 17 trillion from the Rp 18 trillion it had earlier proposed. It also agreed to cut a further Rp 500 billion in planned expenditures.

The government also revised its revenue target from the excise duty on cigarettes, raising it by Rp 800 billion to Rp 10.16 trillion in the next fiscal year. It also increased estimated nontax revenue -- mainly dividends from state companies -- by Rp 700 billion to Rp 26.49 trillion.

The revised draft budget now awaits approval from the House of Representatives plenary session scheduled for Friday.

Noviarman Kailani of the House's dominant Golkar faction urged the government to trace funds belonging to charity foundations led by Soeharto. These funds were accumulated during Soeharto's tenure through the issuance of presidential and ministerial decrees.

The funds should be claimed by the government as nontax revenue to help finance the bank recapitalization program, Noviarman said.

Many of Soeharto's charity foundations accumulated money through graft-tainted business deals as well as abuses of power.

The former president has been questioned by the attorney general over the alleged misuse of the foundations' funds.

The faction of the Armed Forces in the House said on Wednesday the government must increase revenues from all sectors, especially the forestry and mining sectors.

It also called on the government to "fight" to obtain debt relief from its foreign creditors in order to reduce the debt burden on future generations. (das)