"The realization of a budget should not produce bad outcome, mark-up and misappropriation," Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said.
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said the absorption of state budget must be improved in an effort to make budget spending more qualitative.

"I agree that the effectiveness of budget must be maintained. There are many reports by the media about bad quality of budget absorption in the last one year and this serves a lesson for the government to improve in national scale the budgeting system," the minister said here on Friday.

He said that weak budget system must be strengthened so that next year it would not happen again. A good budget absorption must be able to minimize misappropriation and inefficiency so that slow absorption would not recur again.

"The realization of a budget should not produce bad outcome, mark-up and misappropriation," the minister stressed.

He said that funds allocated for the government in the revised budget always increased and its realization should be suitable with expectation because, if not, it could have bad impact on the economic growth.

"We want the realization of budget could be carried out fast. Thus all budget headings which are not related to the budget revision should remain to be implemented. And we should take follow-up steps regarding the budget headings which are revised," the minister added.

He expressed his hope that in order to speed up the budget absorption, Presidential Decree No. 54 /2010 on goods procurement should be revised soon.

"Realization of budget is a challenge and the presidential decree will be revised. We hope it could be accelerated because there are policies in the revision that would accelerate procurement of goods in Indonesia," the minister said.(*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
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