Purbaya Waits For INA Proposal Regarding The Proposed Fund Of IDR 50 Trillion From SAL

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance Purbaya Yudhi Sadives opened his voice regarding the request of the Chairman of the National Economic Council (DEN) Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, regarding the proposed allocation of funds from the Over Budget Balance (SAL) of IDR 50 trillion per year to strengthen the role of the Indonesia Investment Authority (INA).

Purbaya stated that he had not been able to provide further responses, because until now, his party had not received an official proposal from INA regarding the request.

Instead, he highlighted the existence of funds that had not been optimally utilized by the agency.

"I'll see later INA wants to talk about what the proposal will be like. I haven't seen it until now," said Purbaya when met after the 1 year event of the Prabowo-Gibran administration, Thursday, October 16.

Although previously met with INA, Purbaya emphasized that the institution had not officially submitted a request for funds to the Ministry of Finance.

According to him, the proposal is a good input, but still requires careful study and until now INA still has funds that have not been used optimally.

"INA also seems to still have a lot of unemployed money too. INA also seems to have a lot of money that has not been optimized as well. If I give it like that, more and more people will get wine," he said.

Purbaya also questioned the effectiveness of providing additional funds if later it was only used to be placed in instruments such as bonds or other investment posts without any clarity of its immediate impact.

Previously, DEN Chairman Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan highlighted the importance of INA's role as Indonesia's Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) in encouraging investment and national economic growth.

Luhut assessed, with its institutional strength, INA has great potential to attract large-scale foreign investment and proposed that the government through the Minister of Finance allocate funds of IDR 50 trillion per year to INA, sourced from the government budget stored in Bank Indonesia (BI).

"If we withdraw the Rp50 trillion investment there every year, from the existing funds, there is still Rp491 trillion in Bank Indonesia, from the Rp200 trillion that has been placed in banks, that if we extend it it can be Rp1,000 trillion in the next 5 years," he said.

He considered that the funds could be the main catalyst to encourage an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) to Indonesia.