President Jokowi Upset that a Lot of APBD Money is Used for Official Travel, Sri Mulyani Immediately Changes the Rules

Dream - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) recently expressed his disappointment regarding the travel budget in one of the provinces, which reached Rp1 billion. The President is upset because this allocation depletes the budget from one of the programs in the Regional Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBD), which amounts to Rp1.5 billion.

The budget program should have been used for agricultural education to improve their capacity and capabilities.

"Let me give an example, agricultural education in the provincial APBD, I don't need to mention which province, the goal is to improve agricultural human resources, with a total budget of Rp1.5 billion. Rp1 billion for official travel," said Jokowi in the presentation of the examination results of the central government's financial report for the Year 2022 at the State Palace, quoted from Merdeka.com, Wednesday, June 28, 2023.

Similar conditions also occur in several provinces for different programs. Jokowi revealed that there is an allocation of Rp2.5 billion for MSME development in a region in Indonesia. However, from that budget, Rp1.9 billion is allocated for honorariums and official travel.

"Imagine how much. Not even 20 percent is used for actual microbusiness development," he said.

Sri Mulyani's Response

The Minister of Finance, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, responded to this disappointment by planning to issue a Minister of Finance Regulation (PMK) regarding Budget Planning, Budget Implementation, as well as Accounting and Financial Reporting, called the Budget Management PMK. This regulation is compiled by combining 29 related regulations that currently exist.

Lisbon Sirait, the Director of Budget System at the Directorate General of Budget, Ministry of Finance, stated that the merging of content into this new PMK is done by including new content, modifying existing content, and revoking relevant existing regulations.

This new regulation is also expected to prevent budget leakage to finance official travel activities carried out by Ministries/Agencies (K/L). Currently, the Budget Management PMK is still in the determination stage and is expected to be issued next week.

"This merging is expected to serve as a means to reduce overlapping regulations that currently exist. Also, reports that most of the budget is for official travel, even though official travel is part of the cost of activities," said Lisbon at the Budget Management PMK media briefing at the Ministry of Finance DJA Building, Jakarta Pusat.

So, how much is the actual cost of official travel for each Civil Servant (PNS)?

Official Travel Costs

Considering that the current running budget is the 2023 State Budget (APBN/D), the reference used is the Minister of Finance Regulation No. 83/PMK.02/2022 concerning the Standard Input Costs for the 2023 Fiscal Year.

As for the daily allowance for domestic official travel, the highest amount is given to civil servants in Papua, Central Papua, South Papua, and Papua Mountains. The daily allowance for out-of-town travel is Rp580,000, Rp230,000 for more than 8 hours of official travel within the city, and Rp170,000 for training.

Meanwhile, civil servants in Jakarta are entitled to receive a daily allowance for out-of-town travel of up to Rp530,000, Rp210,000 for more than 8 hours of official travel within the city, and Rp160,000 for training.

Additional Representation for Official Travel

Not only for daily official travel, officials from echelon II and above are also entitled to additional representation allowances for official travel. For out-of-town travel, the amounts are Rp150,000 for echelon II officials, Rp200,000 for echelon I officials, and Rp250,000 for state officials.

In addition, there are also regulations regarding the cost of accommodation for domestic official travel. The amount is categorized according to the province (with DKI Jakarta being the highest) and position level.

For example, the accommodation cost for state officials and/or equivalent to echelon I in DKI Jakarta is Rp8.72 million, echelon II officials is Rp2.063 million, echelon III/grade IV officials is Rp992,000, echelon I/grade III/II/I officials is Rp730,000.

Not only for domestic travel, the daily allowance for international official travel is also regulated. The amount is adjusted based on rank and destination country.

For example, the daily allowance for official travel to the United States is USD659 for grade A, USD563 for grade B, USD505 for grade C, and USD447 for grade D.