"We will see the calculation. What we wish is to push it towards two percent," Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said.Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The government aims to curtail the deficit in the 2015 revised budget to below two percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) after it has a fiscal room following fuel price adjustment and spending cuts.
"We will see the calculation. What we wish is to push it towards two percent," Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro stated here on Wednesday.
He noted that the budget deficit could drop below the initial estimate due to some additional income from various optimization efforts and cutting of non-urgent spendings.
The government is confident that it will get additional funds from the conversion of fuel subsidy to productive programs such as infrastructure development and social security worth between Rp110 trillion to Rp140 trillion.
In the meantime, President Joko Widodo has set a target of reducing official travel and meeting expenditures by Rp16 trillion and increasing tax revenue by up to Rp600 trillion in 2015.
The government will immediately include the additional income in the revised draft budget, which will be submitted for discussion in the parliament in January 2015.
The government has earlier set several macro-economic assumptions for the 2015 budget including economic growth rate at 5.8 percent, inflation at 4.4 percent, rupiah exchange rate at Rp11.9 thousand against the US dollar, and three-month rate of state bond at 6.0 percent.
The assumption for Indonesia Crude Price has been set at US$105 per barrel, while the assumptions for oil lifting are set at 900 thousand barrels per day and gas at 1.248 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Based on the assumptions, state revenues are set at Rp1,793.6 trillion while state expenditures at Rp2,039.5 trillion, thereby leaving a budget deficit of Rp245.9 trillion or 2.21 percent of the GDP.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
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