Sri Mulyani Outspoken In DPR, Fiscal Decentralization Snags 127 Regional Heads As Convicted Of Corruption

KPK press conference related to the corruption of the Probolinggo Regent. (Photo: KPK YouTube Screenshot)

JAKARTA – The Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani reports that the fiscal decentralization policy that has been implemented since 2004 until now brings its own issues in the legal field. According to her, many of the regional heads are unable to maintain the performance of using the budget in accordance with applicable regulations.

"The issue of transparency and integrity in the use of the budget is a separate issue, where since 2004 until now there have been 127 regional heads who have been convicted of corruption cases", she said while attending a Working Meeting with Commission XI of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI) on Monday, September 13.

In fact, she continued, in the era of regional autonomy, variants and disparities in regional capacity in carrying out various affairs have been submitted, and become one of the crucial factors in achieving state goals.

“The sub-optimal governance of local government administration could be one of the causes. It can be seen from the low value of local government bureaucratic reform, most of which are still in the CC and C predicates", she said.

For information, in the 2021 State Budget Law, it is stated that the total state expenditure this year is IDR 2.750 trillion.

Of this figure, as much as IDR 795.5 trillion is a budget that is channeled to the regions through the transfer mechanism to the regions and village funds (TKDD).

Meanwhile, in the 2022 APBN Bill, the government states that the TKDD budget allocation is not much different from this year, which is IDR 770 trillion.