Govt to Provide Compensation for Fuel Price Hike, Says Kalla
10 September 2014 18:24 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Vice President-elect Jusuf “JK” Kalla said Joko Widodo’s administration would provide poor people with compensation if the fuel price was to be increased by the new government. JK said the compensation could be in form of direct cash assistance or in other forms.
“Surely there will be a compensation,” JK said on Wednesday, September 10, 2014, after attending the 58th anniversary of Hassanuddin University in Makassar.
According to JK, the fuel price increase is aimed to transfer the subsidy from consumptive to productive sector.
On August 27, 2014 president-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo was in talks with President Bambang Yudhoyono. During the meeting, Jokowi asked President Susilo to increase the fuel price, but the request was later rejected.
In the revised State Budget for 2014, the government reduced the quota of subsidized fuel from 48 million kiloliters to 46 million kiloliters as an effort to control fuel consumption this year. The move was taken because the remaining quota this year shrunk to 10 million kiloliters for premium and 5.5 million kiloliters for diesel fuel.
MUHAMMAD YUNUS