Presiden Jokowi wants to prune routine spending in state budget

I believe there are a lot of costs that could be slashed to increase capital spending."

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) on Tuesday opened a plenary session of his cabinet on draft budget for 2018, asking for greater efficiency in spending by ministries and other government agencies.

"Please check the routine spending over the past years. I believe there are a lot of costs that could be slashed to increase capital spending. Look over in 2017 and 2018 state budget," Jokowi said addressing the meeting at the State Palace here on Tuesday.

Last year, the countrys economy grew 5.02 percent and the government has set economic growth target at 5.6 percent for 2018, up from the target of 5.2 percent for 2017.

Jokowi said apart from efficiency in the state spending to push growth, the government needs to focus on boosting exports and investment.

Amid the big hurdles in the efforts to increase exports with the global slump, Jokowi wants to pushed for market expansion to non traditional markets.

"Send out trade missions to look for possible opportunities in potential countries especially ones with a populations more than 60 million," he said.

Jokowi also called for harder attempts to attract foreign investments into Indonesia, saying many investors are interested in doing business in Indonesia, but were discouraged by restrictive regulations.

"Interest is strong, but the problem lies with us with regulations issued by ministers and directors general," he said.

He said capital spending, which will reach more than Rp2,200 trillion is directed to capital spending for development targets, mainly to push up and improve the quality of the countrys economic growth and to reduce poverty to single digit.

According to Indonesian Poverty & Inequality Statistics, the countrys poverty ratio last year was 10.91 percent down from 11.1 percent in 2015.

The plenary session of the cabinet was attended by ministers and heads of other government agencies lasted for two hours.
(Uu.H-ASG/F001)

Editor: Priyambodo RH
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