TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A Chief Expert Staffer at the Presidential Staff Office, Donny Gahral Adian, said it was reasonable for the government to allocate a large budget to pay influencers.

“What was the harm [in that matter]?” said Donny to reporters on Friday, August 21.

According to him, social media figures are needed to disseminate the government’s policies and programs to the public, especially to the millennial generation.

“Influencers have many followers on social media. Their reach is wider, especially to millennials, which make up about 40 percent of our population,” Donny added.

Earlier, the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) discovered that the government spent a generous budget to hire buzzers worth Rp90.45 billion to disseminate information on state policies from 2014 to 2019. The data were obtained from the Electronic Procurement Service Report (LPSE).

ICW researcher Egi Primayogha opined the large budget meant that the government of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo had no confidence in their own programs so that they needed the so-called internet celebrities.

Donny clarified that such large funds were not only used to hire them, but also for public relations affairs. “It was all allocated to many PR programs, such as public service advertisements, ads on printed media, visual audio ads, program socialization, books production, and so on,” he said.

The expert staffer also denied the accusation, underlining that influencers helped the government introduce programs to the public in a different, simpler way.

Read: ICW Report Reveals Govt Budget for Influencers, Digital Activities

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