Muhaimin On Budget Efficiency: No Social Assistance Budget Embezzlement To Employee Needs

Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment (Menko PM) Muhaimin Iskandar (left)/ANTARA

Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment (Menko PM) Muhaimin Iskandar ensured that budget efficiency policies did not have an impact on the work needs of ministry/institutional employees.

Muhaimin conveyed this after the Ministerial Meeting (RTM) with the Minister of Social Affairs (Mensos) Saifullah Yusuf (Gus Ipul) at the Ministry of Social Affairs Office, Central Jakarta, Tuesday, February 11.

"We need to emphasize that there is no budget cuts for social assistance (bansos), no budget cuts for employee needs, no budget cuts for maintenance, meaning that all work needs are normal," said Muhaimin as quoted by ANTARA.

He emphasized that all ministries/agencies under the coordination of the Coordinating Ministry for Human Development and Culture will continue to support and will implement efficiency policies from the government in accordance with the direction of the Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu).

According to him, efficiency policies are important to provide sharpening, focus, and refreshment to improve national development priorities.

"So for us, efficiency is important to provide sharpening, focusing, and renewing as well as structuring budget concentrations in national development," he said.

Muhaimin continued, the principle of efficiency is reducing budgets for activities that are not priorities so that they can be more focused on the success of programs that have more impact on the community.

"In principle, we minimize priority meetings, so meetings that are not too important for us to eliminate, we eliminate ceremonial activities, we no longer carry out repeat activities, focus on programs that provide benefits for targets, on average," he explained.

Muhaimin also said that each ministry/institution certainly has different concentrations according to their respective priorities, but it is hoped that all can adjust the direction of President Prabowo Subianto.

"The point is at today's meeting, we emphasize each ministry under the Coordinating Ministry for Human Development and Culture to make efficiency a success," he said.

Previously, Deputy Chairman of the National Economic Council (DEN) Mari Elka Pangestu said, not only Indonesia implemented budget efficiency, but Vietnam to the United States (US) also implemented the policy.

He considered this policy reasonable to apply considering the condition of global uncertainty that encourages the movement of fiscal space to be increasingly limited.

"It's not only Indonesia that does efficiency, Vietnam does (budget efficiency), China does, the United States does efficiency. Other countries also make efficiency because basically we see a lot of uncertainty in the world so how the fiscal space can be maintained," said Mari Elka.