Legislators complete debates on revised 2003 budget
Dadan Wijaksana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
After weeks of intense debate, the House of Representatives' budget commission completed its revision of the 2003 state budget on Thursday, clearing the last hurdle for the House to approve it later this month.
"Now, we just have to wait for the House's plenary meeting to pass it into law on Nov. 25," commission head Abdullah Zainie announced after presiding over the final discussion on the budget.
He added that the last item approved was the increase in the allocation of funds to regions to Rp 76.98 trillion (US$8.6 billion) from Rp 75.41 trillion under the first draft of the budget.
The approval should bring relief to many people who had been worried that the deliberation of the budget could not be completed this month and thus would force regional governments to delay discussions about their own budgets. The regions draw up their own budgets based upon figures stipulated in the central government's budget.
The House will recess at the end of this month.
The commission and the government have agreed to raise the budget deficit to 1.78 percent of GDP or Rp 34.44 trillion from 1.3 percent in the first draft.
Of the total deficit, some Rp 22.45 trillion will be funded by domestic sources such as privatization and asset sales, while the remainder will be covered by foreign financing, which is expected to come from donor countries grouped in the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI).
"Overall, I can say that the revised version we approved today is better than the initial one. For instance, the revised budget allocates more for economic stimulus than the amount first proposed by the government," he added.
Under the revised budget, some Rp 10.6 trillion in extra development spending is allocated to help stimulate the economy. The figure was almost double the government's proposal of Rp 5.9 trillion.
The stimulus in question is aimed at softening the impact of the Oct. 12 Bali bomb blasts on the country's economy.
The debate, which lasted for over a month, centered mostly on adjusting most of the figures in the initial draft budget, presented to the House in August, to better reflect the economic impacts of the Bali bombings.
Zainie said that the revised version set a target for total state revenue at Rp 336.2 trillion, or Rp 8.3 trillion higher than the initial target.
"That figure has taken into account a Rp 4.7 trillion cut in the tax revenue target, from Rp 260.8 trillion to Rp 254.1 trillion," he said.
The draft also assumes a 4 percent growth and 9 percent inflation, while the rupiah's exchange rate is set at 9,000 per dollar and Bank Indonesia's three-month interest rates at 13 percent.