Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) said the government`s economic team has to work hard to meet the targets set in the draft state budget for 2019 proposed by President Joko Widodo at a plenary session of the House of Representatives.

Apindo chairman Hariyadi Sukamdani said here on Thursday, he appreciated the macro economic targets set in calculating the draft state budget, which he described as quite good.

However, in order to meet the targets such as for tax revenues and non tax income, the economic team of the government has to work harder, Hariyadi said.

"Realization of the tax and non tax revenues could be off target if the cabinet did not work well," he said.

In plenary session of the House of Representatives on Thursday, President Joko Widodo presented the draft state budget for 2019 with a financial note.

The president said tax revenues contributed 81 percent or Rp1,548.5 trillion to the state budget fund.

The President said the tax contribution to the state budget has increased thanks to improvement in taxation policy, taxation strategy and sustainable tax reform and better compliance of the tax payers.

In addition to looking for more sources of income, Jokowi went on to say, that the government would seek to improve investment climate and taxation policy.

The government has also issued tax regulation as incentive specially for small and medium businesses and expanded tax basis to follow the implementation of tax amnesty through Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI).

"Ahead, our tax policy is expected to be more accommodating in facing the digital economic trend and we will optimize the use of information technology in supporting taxation administration," the president said.

Earlier, the financial ministry said in the first seven months of the year tax revenues totalled Rp687.17 trillion or 48.26 percent of the target of Rp1.424 trillion set for this year.

Taxation Director General Robert Pakpahan said,"In the January-July period the growth was 14.36 percent year-on-year, and the performance was better than in the first half of the year when the growth was 13.99 percent year-on-year."

Reporting by Muhammad Razi Rahman

Editing by AS)

Reporter: Muhammad Razi Rahman
Editor: Yosep Hariyadi
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