Economist: No Urgency Acceptance Of CPNS, Too Fat

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA Economic observers and public policy expert at the Narasi Institute, Achmad Nur Hidayat, criticized the government's attitude in planning to recruit Candidates for Civil Servants (CPNS) for the 2023 period.

According to him, this has the potential to put additional pressure on fiscal instruments, which are currently reducing shocks from the uncertainty of the situation, especially global factors.

"There is no urgency to accept civil servants because the 2023 State Budget has limited capabilities. In addition, the policy design of state civil servants is efficiency as written in the PPKF KEM document," he said in a written message on Wednesday, June 14.

Achmad explained that the government had issued a statement that this year's bureaucratic reform policy was carried out by innovating digital public services, e-office-based government systems, rewards and punishment mechanisms, rightsizing organizations and government personnel, and formulating the design of pension reform.

"The addition of new civil servants causes civil servants to not be right in sizing, be too fat and burden the state budget too much," he said.

Ahmad noted that the 2023 State Budget was approved at the 7th DPR Plenary Meeting of Session Period I of the 2022-2023 Session Year in September 2022. It was stated that in this provision there was no budget to pay the salaries of new civil servants. This means that the government has no intention of opening up new civil servants.

As for the 2023 State Budget, employee spending increased to IDR 442.6 trillion or 2.10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is sourced from spending on salaries and allowances of IDR 1.77.9 trillion, honorarium, overtime, special allowances of IDR 95 trillion, and social contributions of IDR 169.7 trillion.

It was recorded that in the 2023 State Budget, employee spending increased by 2.10 percent of GDP. However, the increase was the same as 2020, 2021, and 2022 (increased by the range of 2.10 percent to 2.28 percent) where that year there were no new CPNS additions.