Prabowo Believes That The State Budget Is Able To Finance IKN And Share Free Milk

Presidential candidate number 2 Prabowo Subianto conveyed the vision and mission witnessed by the Chairman of the Central Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI) Hendry Ch Bangun (left)/ANTARA PHOTO/Galih Pradipta/tom.

JAKARTA - Presidential Candidate Prabowo Subianto believes that the State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBN) is able to finance the development of the Capital City of the Archipelago (IKN) and its nutritional improvement program, namely distributing milk and free lunch as well as nutrition assistance for pregnant women.

The construction of IKN costs at least up to IDR 466 trillion, while the realization of the Prabowo-Gibran pair nutrition improvement program also requires approximately the same cost of around IDR 400 trillion per year.

"It seems that Rp440 trillion is large, yes, but Indonesia has the ability. Now, our APBN for social assistance is close to Rp500 trillion, then the budget for education is Rp600 trillion. So, what I ask is if we feed our children, it can be classified as social assistance or not, the second can be classified as education or not giving food (children) at school," Prabowo said in response to a question from one of the Central PWI administrators at a dialogue event at the Press Council office, Jakarta, reported by ANTARA, Thursday, January 4.

He continued that there is also the potential for an increase in state revenue as a result of improving the tax and non-tax revenue system.

"Now, we have a tax ratio of around 12 percent, revenue, revenue from taxes, excise, etc. if I'm not mistaken, it's 12 percent. Vietnam 18 percent, Thailand 18 percent, even now there is a version (mentioning) Thailand is already above 18 percent. every one percent increase in state revenue, each one percent is 15 billion dollars," said Prabowo.

According to Prabowo, if Indonesia is able to equalize the figure to 18 percent or the same as Vietnam and Thailand, then there is an additional state revenue of up to 90 billion US dollars.

"This means that we have to increase by 6 percent. Six times 15 is the same as 90 billion extra dollars, and this is being worked on by the government (through) computerization and so on, efficiency and so on. We can. We have tremendous potential. So, there are many opportunities. I am very optimistic that we will be able to finance it," said the presidential candidate number 2.

Meanwhile, regarding IKN, Prabowo believes that Indonesia can afford it. "Our current budget for infrastructure is also close to IDR 300 trillion, if I'm not mistaken in the current APBN 12 billion dollars. Is IKN not infrastructure? So, we can manage it," said Prabowo.

In the dialogue event, he reminded the Indonesian people not to get brainwashing: Indonesia is a poor and underprivileged country. "That is an infinity complex," added Prabowo.