Jakarta officials 'must start tracking budget proposals'

Jakarta’s Governor has reminded officials that every change in the draft budget should be recorded online. “I have told them to input all meetings of the budgetary committee.

But when I checked there were many meetings...that had not been entered into the e-budgeting system. They only entered the final results,” said Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama today. Recording these changes online will help citizens monitor the entire process and officials can ensure that previous mistakes are not repeated, he said.

“In the past, many allocations just appeared or disappeared. But, if we publish the entire process of the budget deliberation, such practices will belong to the past,” he added.

The Governor has asked Tuty Kusumawati, head of the city’s planning agency Bappeda, to ensure that every increase and decrease is tracked on the e-budgeting system. The e-budgeting system was introduced in 2013 by President Joko Widodo while he was Jakarta’s Governor to reduce corruption in the city.