The rambling city budget

One thing that never fails to surprise people about the spending allocations in Jakarta's annual provincial budget is the carryovers in development funds. In the 2001 budget, for example, Rp 1.6 trillion of the total Rp 8.14 trillion in development funds remained unused. In the following year about Rp 2 trillion, from a total Rp 9.7 trillion, was left over.

From one point of view, those leftovers may reflect the administration's financial prudence. From another, however, it shows the administration's lack of a sense of crisis, and a failure to use the development budget appropriately.

To judge by the ratio between routine expenditure -- which included health allowances for councillors amounting to Rp 50 million a year for each legislator in 2002, as well as official trips -- and the expenditure on development, those two budgets mentioned also showed that the administration was not siding with the people's interests.

The 2001 budget allocated Rp 5.51 trillion to routine expenditure, reserving the remainder for development, including education and infrastructure projects, and clothing allowances for both councillors and executives. Routine expenditure in the 2002 budget amounted to a total of Rp 5.6 trillion, while the remaining Rp 3.29 trillion was set aside for development.

Ironically, too, those small development budgets were not all used up on development programs. Somehow, it is difficult to accept that whereas the entire routine budgets were all used up, invariably part of the development budget remained unused.

Unfortunately, this year's budget is no less irrational than those two previous budgets. The City Council has just approved an additional amount of Rp 576.942 billion in additional funds to fatten the total budget this year to a total Rp 11.563 trillion (approximately US$1.3 billion).

As was the case in the two previous budget years, the city administration spent less than 25 percent of the budget in the first semester of this year (before revision). This leaves us no option but to conclude that this lower expenditure -- including in the two previous budget years -- can only indicate the administration's poor performance in carrying out development projects for public welfare. Even lay people would have asked how there could have been surpluses in development expenditure while so many matters relating to public services continue to require prompt attention.

To look at it in a simple and realistic way: The administration had Rp 1.6 trillion left over from its 2001 budget and Rp 2.6 trillion from its 2002 budget, yet it always complained about a lack of money to purchase garbage trucks and fire engines. The fire department, meanwhile, received only Rp 2 billion from the 2002 budget for its operations; we cannot expect this vital service to perform as expected because it has only 150 old fire engines, of which 15 are in poor condition. Ideally, the city should have at least 265 fire trucks. Let us say a new fire engine costs Rp 3 billion: The administration could have spent at least Rp 6 billion on two new ones last year.

Garbage is another pressing problem for this capital city. The city sanitation office can dispose of only 14,700 cubic meters of the 23,400 cubic meters of garbage that are produced daily by its residents. This means that at least 260,000 cubic meters of rubbish remain uncollected and undisposed of every month. The explanation is hardly a surprise: The agency has only 700 trucks, while it needs at least 1,200 to do the job. In the current budget the sanitation agency gets less than Rp 300 billion to improve its services and purchase new garbage trucks. With a leftover of Rp 2 trillion, the administration could have purchased several new garbage trucks and the sanitation and garbage services could have been improved.

Development of infrastructure is another problem. Most rivers, gutters and canals are clogged and covered with garbage. Why didn't the decision makers think of setting aside some of the annual budget leftovers for cleaning up those rivers and canals? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the authorities have no sympathy for the public's perennial headaches.

What should we conclude from all this? While we appreciate the administration's all-out efforts to develop the city and make its residents more prosperous, we have to say that the authorities lack a genuine sense of crisis. We must also conclude that the officials have shown an inability to use the money set aside by the budget to appropriate projects, which -- ironically -- they planned before the annual budget was proposed.

It is therefore time that our city administration officials become more sensitive and mindful of the public's needs. Jakarta's citizens have so far not been involved in any public discussion on development plans before the expenditure has been proposed in the annual budget.