"The biggest budget cuts will take place in 15 other ministries whose budget are big, except the ministry of education and culture because the law has regulated that education and culture ministry`s budget could reach 20 percent of the total state budget," Hatta said before attending a coordination meeting on ministry budget cut here on Wednesday.
The minister said that the plan to reduce ministries` budget would be carried out to stop increasing budget deficit and unnecessary expenditure on official trips and building constructions.
He said that the cut would be carried out proportional to the allocation of the ministries` budget for their work plan and goods and service procurement plan.
"We will proportionally assess the ministries` budget based on the value of their work plan. We will not see only the amount of the budget but also their work plans," the chief economic minister said.
In the meantime, National Development Planning Minister/Head of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) Armida Alisjahbana said the budget cut would be carried out to preserve the country`s fiscal resilience and to make expenditure more efficient.
"Of course this is something difficult. Because we are now in the month of May when we have to see what parts of the budget that really needs to be cut so that it would not disturb work target," Minister Armida said.
Armida ascertained that the budget that would be cut included that for non operational expenditure whose implementation was still delayed and whose cut would not disturb development.
"Of course each ministry will have different budget cut with that of others. Their budget could not be cut equally," she said.
(A014/O001)
Editor: Jafar M Sidik
Copyright © ANTARA 2013
