The Ministry Of Finance Ensures That The State Budget Has Resilience To The Gejolak Of World Oil Prices

Photo: Doc. Antara

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) ensures that the state budget (APBN) has adequate resilience to the turmoil in global crude prices.

"The government continues to exercise. As at the beginning of last year, in January we did stress testing to see if the APBN would be significantly affected by oil price movements," said Head of the Center for Macroeconomic Policy of the Fiscal Policy Agency (BKF) of the Ministry of Finance Abdurrohman during the Media Gathering of the Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu), in Puncak, Bogor, quoted from Antara, Monday, September 26.

Abdurrohman agrees that oil prices continue to experience turmoil, such as in 2022 oil prices had touched 120 US dollars per barrel.

However, the Indonesian government believes that oil prices will not hold at a high point for a long time, because demand will continue to decline along with rising prices.

Considering this, Abdurrohman estimates that next year's oil price will not reach 100 US dollars per barrel.

Even so, the government is still preparing various scenarios for policy anticipation to maintain the resilience of the state budget from the risk of commodity price fluctuations.

"Maybe in the next few weeks or the beginning of the year we will see. If the movement is significant, we will see several possible scenarios," said Abdurrohman.

On the other hand, he said, the increase in oil prices could also have positive implications for state revenues. Rising oil prices are usually followed by other commodities where Indonesia becomes an exporter.

Therefore, although in terms of spending it has increased, the revenue side is also relatively high.

"Because other commodity prices also follow. So, in terms of revenue, we still get net gains from the increase," he said again.

The government and the DPR RI have agreed on the price of 82 US dollars of crude oil per barrel in the 2024 State Budget Law. In addition to oil prices, other basic macro assumptions agreed are economic growth of 5.2 percent, controlled inflation of 2.8 percent, rupiah exchange rate of Rp. 15 thousand per US dollar, 10-year Government Securities (SBN) interest rate of 6.7 percent, and oil lifting of 635 thousand barrels per day and gas lifting of 1.033 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.