Sri Mulyani Responds to Demand on Defense System Budget

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati responded demands on the budget procurement of Indonesia’s primary defense system or alutsista in 2019.

Sri Mulyani explained the government must be able to allocate budget on alutsista for Indonesian Military and National Police as well as institutional development in the State Budget (APBN).

Military force and police for their duties, she added, must be accompanied with defense equipment. “They need to have alutsista so they can learn well about war fight and be a professional officer,” said Sri Mulyani during a general lecture in the University of Indonesia in Depok, Wednesday, November 14.

Sri Mulyani further mentioned fiscal policy reformation in Indonesia must have a balanced scale of priorities. One of these was an investment in the human resources sector. “We have to allocate for infrastructure budget and also budget to improve institutions.”

According to Sri Mulyani, the education budget must be regulated in a bid to improve human resources. Thus, it did not only focus on the education budget, “but also how the human resources quality from the view of school management.”

In addition, the institutions must be improved as well, particularly national police and military force. ‘They must be improved to be professional police or army,” Sri Mulyani added.

Earlier, National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian along with the House of Representatives (DPR) speakers discussed the police budget for 2019. Tito suggested additional budget amounted to Rp44.4 trillion from the figure set by Finance Ministry at Rp76.9 trillion.

IRSYAN HASYIM