President's nonbudgetary funds reviewed

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

President Megawati Soekarnoputri has decided to temporarily freeze nonbudgetary funds, as their function and regulation needed reviewing, the President's Secretary, Kemal Munawar, said on Friday.

The nonbudgetary funds were introduced during the tenure of former president Soeharto and they amounted to hundreds of billions of rupiah. They were usually disbursed when the president needed to provide emergency donations.

However, there have been no public reports on the existence of such funds, nor from where, how much and what such a huge amount of money was spent on.

"Because of that, the President has decided to freeze the funds to allow time for further investigation. So, we haven't accepted any income or spent any of the money since Ibu Megawati took office," Kemal said.

He further explained that for years the funds were placed under the authority of the State Secretariat and only during the tenure of former president Abdurrahman Wahid were they placed under the president's secretary.

"Usually, the funds were utilized when the president had to make a donation for flood victims, for the construction of places of worship or other kinds of grants during official trips. They are more like emergency funds," Kemal added.

He declined to disclose the amount, saying only that they did not reach trillions of rupiah as people had suspected.

Previously, it had been common practice in the Indonesian government to have nonbudgetary funds. They were not recorded in the State Budget, thereby were prone to misuse as there was no control over their disbursement.

The funds were mostly collected from state-owned enterprises or other financial sources in government institutions.

However, after the downfall of Soeharto, there had been growing demands to examine the presence of such funding, which ended up with the government deciding to scrap all kinds of collections from state institutions.

During Abdurrahman's tenure, the government decided to stop the collection but continued to use the available funds for certain expenses, including repeated overseas trips.

Under the coming new structure of the State Secretariat, there has not yet been any decision on where the funds should be placed or how to regulate them.

Legislator from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) Sophan Sophiaan said that it was necessary to have such funds as the president needed them, but it was important that they were made accountable to the public.

"What is needed is public accountability. The public should know the purpose and usage of such funds. All state income and expenses should be recorded in the State Budget," he added.