Local Government Funds Deposit Hundreds Of Trillions In Banks, Ministry Of Finance Reveals The Result Of Slow Realization Of Expenditures

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Finance noted that local government-owned funds (Pemda) stored in banks reached IDR 233.11 trillion at the end of August 2025.

This figure is the highest in the last five years in the same period.

The Director General of Treasury of the Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) Astera Primanto Bhakti said that the phenomenon of depositing local government funds in banks is not new, because one of the main causes is delays in realizing the Regional Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBD) expenditure.

"First, they plan, make the APBD, this is usually done around September-October in the previous year. Then from there, they just started a contract. That's even if I look at the modus operandi from year to year, the contract usually only starts around 4 months so April, that's just a contract. Then, realized usually starts fast in the last three months," Prima told the media crew in a media briefing, Friday, October 3.

According to him, this kind of pattern causes local government funds to tend to be high in the middle of the year, and starts to decline towards the end of the year.

"So with this cycle, the money that has been paid, this is accumulated, the rest of the previous year it entered again, there were additional ones, DAU, the least is block grant-block grant. This is gathering at the BPD-BPD. This is what caused the balance to be high, which was said to be Rp223 trillion. But later at the end of the year, this will lead to a figure of Rp95-100 trillion," he said.

Prima also explained that the funds deposited were generally in the form of giro, so the mechanism tended to be dynamic when there was a request for payment, then re-entered when there was income.

Dia menyampaikan faktor lain yang memengaruhi lambatnya serapan anggaran adalah rendahnya kapasitas belanja di beberapa daerah, sehingga pemerintah daerah diimbau untuk meningkatkan akselerasi belanja, agar APBD dapat berperan sebagai penggerak ekonomi lokal.

"Ada daerah-daerah yang tidak bisa membelanjakannya dengan optimal sehingga uangnya ya nongkrong situ aja. Tadi mulai dari schedule, kontrak dan lain-lain. Nah ini yang menjadi tantangan buat daerah di mana dia mempercepat itu sehingga saldo kasnya ini bisa lebih baik, jadi enggak kelihatan tinggi," jelasnya.

He conveyed that another factor that affects the slow absorption of the budget is the low capacity of spending in several regions, so that local governments are encouraged to increase the acceleration of spending, so that the APBD can act as a driving force for the local economy.

"There are areas that cannot spend optimally so that the money just hangs out there. Earlier, starting from schedules, contracts and others. Now this is a challenge for the region where he accelerates it so that the balance of cash can be better, so it doesn't look high," he explained.