CSIS: Government Priority Programs Are Not Urgent But Still Running

Free Nutrition Food (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - The center for Strategic and International Studies or CSIS Indonesia assesses that the impact of government priority programs with jumbo budgets such as Free Nutrition Food (MBG) is still ineffective. The planning and provision of the budget are not urgent.

"The government's high-priority programs and their impacts are still ineffective or not urgent, they are still being implemented. For example, MBG rose from Rp107 trillion to Rp335 trillion and (the MBG program) controlled 44 percent of the education budget," said Senior Researcher of the Department of Economics CSIS Deni Friawan as seen on YouTube CSIS Indonesia, Wednesday, September 3.

Apart from MBG, the budget for defense, security and order is also considered to take a large portion. The reason is, this budget controls around IDR 565 trillion or almost 19 percent of government spending. In fact, the current conditions are not urgent.

According to him, the problem currently being highlighted is how the budget is spent. Given, accountability and transparency are still unclear today.

"Are the funds spent to buy good tools, which are proper in modernizing our defense forces or the police, or instead become a tool to beat their own people," he said.

Deni also highlighted capital assistance for the Red and White Village Cooperative, which budgeted around Rp. 3 billion per unit for the 80,000 cooperative units that were built. According to him, until today the clarity is still gray about the location of the place, members and others.

Not only that, said Deni, the salaries and allowances of DPR officials continued to climb. He underlined that the salary and allowance budget for DPR officials in 2024 was IDR 5.9 trillion, but then increased to IDR 9.9 trillion for 2025-2026.

Ironically, when the government made great efficiency in the public budget in 2024-2025, members of the DPR even received a housing allowance of IDR 50 million per month for each person.

The next problem is that the regional transfer budget (TKD) in the 2025 APBN has been cut by Rp50.59 trillion due to efficiency policies. This continues next year, the government proposes a TKD allocation in the 2026 RAPBN of Rp650 trillion, down 24.7 percent compared to the 2025 TKD outlook which amounted to Rp864.1 trillion.

"As a result, with limited fiscal capacity in the regions, like it or not, the choice is the local government to increase land and building taxes (PBB) and that becomes an additional burden for the community," said Deni.

On the other hand, the government actually plans to increase BPJS contributions which are allegedly increasingly burdensome to the community. Overall, Deni said, the problem that people currently feel is justice and life pressure threatens the Indonesian economy and democracy.

Therefore, according to Deni, the government does not need to be surprised by the recent wave of protests. The reason, he said, was that the protests were an accumulation of unrest over the difficulties of life felt by the community.

"People feel betrayed because political elites appear arrogant and insensitive, deaf," he concluded.