TEMPO.CO, Jakarta-The House of Representatives (DPR) plans to form a working committee that supervises and monitors state debts. Ahmadi Noor Supit, chairman of DPR's, Finance and Banking Commission, said the working committee will be established by the Finance Commission.
The Golkar Party politician said on Monday that the House feels the need to oversee the state's debt activities so that "our debts can be monitored and accounted for."
Ahmadi said the work committee request for reports on the development of the state debts every month. The committee will also oversee the reasons for the withdrawals of government debt.
According to Ahmadi, the committee wishes to learn the nature of the state budget deficits by monitoring the government's budget surplus. "Revenues must be increased," he said.
According to the Finance Ministry, as of March 2016 the government debt has reached Rp3263.52 trillion. The figure is made up of Rp750.16 trillion of foreign debt and Rp2,513.36 trillion worth of various types of state bonds and government securities.
Meanwhile, according to the records of Bank Indonesia (BI), the combined value of the government's and private sector's foreign debt as per March 2016 has reached US$316 billion. Of that amount, 51.2 percent was accounted by private debts.
Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said he will not object to the Finance Commission plan to form a work committee that monitors and inspect government debt. However, the minister asks the parliament to involve the National Development Planning Ministry and state-owned enterprises as the debts' planner and implementer.
According to Bambang, the government has debts because it is necessary. Almost all countries in the world, Bambang said, adopt the budget deficit policy where they use loans to finance expenditures. Bambang ensured that all loans from multilateral and bilateral creditors are free from interventions.
"To get a budget surplus, the key is to make efficiencies in spending and boosting revenues," he said.
Minister Bambang said that debts will remain as a source of state financing, primarily from the issuance of bonds.
Schneider Siahaan, the Finance Ministry's director for strategics and debt portfolio, said that this year the government is targeting to obtain Rp555.7 trillion worth of financing budget from bond issuances. To date, the government has issued bonds worth Rp509.4 trillion.
Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Darmin Nasution said that the amount of state debt up to March 2016 is still under control. Nasution guaranteed that the government will not slow down on debts. President Joko Widodo, he said, only asked his aides to make accurate calculations on interests and installments. "We must give it extra attention to prevent fiscal spaces from becoming smaller in the future," Nasution said.
The State Financial Law limits the government debt from exceeding 60 percent of the GDP. Meanwhile, BI assesses that the safe foreign debt-to-GDP ratio is at 51.5 percent. According to BI's records, Indonesia's foreign debt-to-GDP ratio as of March 2016 stood at 36.47 percent.
ANDI IBNU