Rp 5.25 trillion for rice subsidy next year

Rp 5.25 trillion for rice subsidy next year

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government and the budget commission of the House of Representative has decided to allocate Rp 5.255 trillion (US$588 million) to subsidy rice for the poor next year.

This represents an approximately 10 percent increase over the Rp 4.83 trillion allocated last year.

The subsidy will be distributed to 8.59 million poor families across the country, the director of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog), Widjanarko Puspoyo, said after a meeting with the House budget committee on Wednesday.

The commission and the government arrived at the figure based on the assumption that "there will be no increase in the number of poor families."

"We have increased the total budget for rice subsidies considering the rice is now more expensive," he said.

According to Widjanarko, each poor family will receive a total subsidy amounting to 240 kilograms of rice for the whole year.

During Wednesday's meeting, the commission and the government also discussed subsidies on fuel and electricity sold to the public. However, as of 8:30 p.m, the discussions were still underway.

In the draft 2004 state budget submitted by the government to the House in August, the government allocated Rp 12.7 trillion and Rp 10.6 trillion on fuel and non-fuel subsidies respectively. The electricity subsidy was expected to cost about Rp 3.3 trillion.

However, during the meeting with the commission, the government and the state electricity company (PLN) gave different estimates on the electricity subsidy. PLN estimated the subsidy at about Rp 3.9 trillion.