March 2024 State Spending Swells 18% Due to Elections

The Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) reported that the realization of state expenditure in the State Budget (APBN) reached Rp470.3 trillion as of March 15, 2024.

"This means that 14% of state expenditure has been realized," said Finance Minister Sri Mulyani during a working meeting with Commission XI of the DPR RI on Tuesday (March 19, 2024).

State expenditure realization until the middle of this month grew by 18% compared to March 15, 2023 (year-on-year/yoy).

Broken down by item, this expenditure growth originated in central government expenditure, specifically ministry/agency (K/L) expenditure, which increased by 24.5% (yoy) to Rp165.4 trillion.

"This significant increase is mainly due to the elections held in February. So, there was a lot of spending for the election implementation," said Sri Mulyani.

Next, the realization of non-K/L central government expenditure amounted to Rp163.4 trillion, or an increase of 10.4% (yoy). Expenditure in this item was channeled for energy subsidies and pension benefit payments.

Then, the disbursement of transfers to regions (TKD) has been implemented at Rp141.4 trillion, or up 20.5% from the same period last year (yoy).

On the other hand, the realization of state revenue as of March 15, 2024, amounted to Rp493.2 trillion, equivalent to 17.6% of this year's budget, which totaled Rp2,802.3 trillion.

This higher revenue than expenditure resulted in an APBN surplus of Rp22.8 trillion. However, this figure decreased from the same period last year (yoy), which had a surplus of Rp122.9 trillion.

"This is a fairly sharp decline, but we are still quite surplus until March 15, 2024. So the percentage of GDP is around 0.1%," said Sri Mulyani.