Personnel Expenditure to Increase by Rp20 Trillion in 2027: Will Civil Servant Salaries Rise?
The government has increased the allocation for personnel expenditure in the 2_027 Draft State Budget (RAPBN). This raises the question of whether the salaries of civil servants (ASN), including permanent civil servants (PNS), will increase next year.
In the 2027 Financial Note and RAPBN, the government has allocated a higher amount for personnel expenditure compared to previous budgets. The value of personnel expenditure is recorded to have risen by approximately Rp20 trillion, reaching Rp378.9 trillion, which is higher than the Rp358 trillion ceiling prepared in the 2026 State Budget (APBN).
Nevertheless, the government did not specifically mention any policy for increasing the basic salary of civil servants in the document, even when President Prabowo Subianto read the 2027 Financial Note at the MPR RI Building on 14 August 2026.
Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa emphasised that the government has not yet decided to raise civil servant salaries in 2027. He stated that they are still discussing the possibilities for realising such a basic salary increase.
“We are still discussing it,” said Purbaya during the press conference for the 2027 RAPBN and Financial Note on Friday (14/8/2026).
However, the increase in personnel expenditure allocation will be used for the payment of salaries and performance allowances for civil servants based on the bureaucratic reform achievements of each Ministry/Agency (K/L).
The personnel expenditure policy for the 2027 fiscal year is directed towards, among other things:
improving the quality and productivity of state apparatus to enhance the quality of public services, including through the implementation of digitalisation;
continuing the comprehensive implementation of bureaucratic reform;
ensuring the accuracy of personnel expenditure requirements and improving the quality of expenditure while maintaining the purchasing power and consumption of state apparatus;
calculating the 2027 civil servant requirements by considering the necessary staff formations and the number of retiring civil servants, guided by zero or minus growth policies.
For information, the last salary increase for civil servants occurred in 2024 through Government Regulation (PP) Number 5 of 2024, signed on 26 January 2024. Through that regulation, the government increased civil servant salaries by 8% after no adjustments had been made for four years.
This means that in the last two years, the basic salary of civil servants has not undergone any changes. Looking back over the last decade, increases in civil servant salaries have also been relatively limited, occurring only three times: 5% in 2015, 5% in 2019, and 8% in 2024.