President Jokowi: Internal Supervision Must Be Result-Oriented

President Jokowi opens the 2023 National Coordination Meeting of Government Internal Supervision, Wednesday (06/14) in Jakarta. (Photo by: Rahmat/PR)

Internal supervision carried out by the Financial and Development Supervisory Agency (BPKP) and the Government Internal Supervisory Apparatus (APIP) must be result-oriented, according to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

He made the statement at the Opening of the 2023 National Coordination Meeting (Rakornas) of Government Internal Supervision (PIP), at the BPKP Office, Jakarta, Wednesday (06/14).

“The BPKP’s task must be result oriented. Give directives to the regional governments, the Central Government, SOEs, ministries/institutions, to create concrete results,” said the President.

President Jokowi said that currently the Government is focusing on increasing productivity, especially to achieve Golden Indonesia 2045. Therefore, the President reminded that every Rupiah spent from the state budget (APBN) as well as the regional budget (APBD) and state-owned enterprises must be productive.

“Why do I often go to the field? Because I want to make sure that the Government’s programs can actually reach the people and the community. We are lack of it (supervision). We must keep monitoring and checking them. Still, we miss it even though we already checked it,” he said.

On that occasion, the President also highlighted the report by the Head of the BPKP Muhammad Yusuf Ateh stating that approximately 43 percent of government’s programs are not optimal to leverage development targets in the sample areas.

“I need to remind everyone, both at the central and regional levels, in using the budget,” he said.

The President cited an example of the budget for a number of programs in a regency, such as handling stunting and building an agricultural center, 80 percent of the budget of which is only used for meetings and business trips, while only 20 percent is for concrete activities.

“This is the big task of BPKP, to reverse the budget to 80 percent for concrete action and 20 percent for honorariums, business trips, and meetings. It is called productive (budget),” he said.

Another example, he emphasized the importance of prioritizing the social protection budget to tackle poverty in a number of regions. Those problems, the President continued, need assistance and supervision so that the budget is productive.

“We know that there is still a lot of poverty, areas with high poverty rate, but the social protection budget is less than one percent. We should prioritize it first. That issue  needs to be closely watched, identified. Then we provide recommendations, assist, oversee, so that our budget is really productive,” he said. (DND/UN) (EST/MUR)