President: Don't Use State Budget to Buy Imported Products

Jakarta, MINA – President Joko Widodo stressed the importance of spurring economic growth by not using the State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBN), Regional Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBD), and state-owned enterprises budget to buy imported goods.

“This is people’s money, APBN, APBD, in BUMN, this is people’s money. on’t buy imported goods. t would be a big mistake for us to do that,” said the President when giving a briefing at the Evaluation of the Affirmation Action to Increase the Purchase and Utilization of Domestic Products in the Context of the Proudly Made Indonesian National Movement (Gernas BBI), at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) on Tuesday (May 24).

The President also expressed his joy at the commitment to purchase local products which reached Rp802 trillion for ministries/agencies and local governments and Rp296 trillion for state-owned enterprises. However, the President emphasized that his staff should be able to immediately realize the commitment to purchase and use these domestic products.

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“What we need is the realization, how to realize it, because the realization is still below 10 percent, still Rp110.2 trillion,” he said.

The Head of State also emphasized that he would monitor the progress of the realization of the commitments that have been obtained for the purchase and use of these local products.

“Now we can follow it daily, how many commitments, which ones have been realized, how many commits, which ones have been realized. This is what is called an application, a platform that we want to build so that once again, don’t let people’s money buy imported products. It is a big mistake for us, in the current condition, it is very difficult to find income for the country, it is very difficult to find foreign exchange for the country,” he concluded.

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Meanwhile, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Menko Marves) Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said that his party continues to coordinate to ensure that domestic product spending (PDN), especially micro and small business products (UMK) and the use of electronic catalogs (e-catalog) can be realized.

“We continue to coordinate to ensure that domestic product purchases, especially MSMEs with original Indonesian brands, we encourage the use of electronic catalogs so that they can be realized optimally,” said Luhut.

Luhut said that as of May 24, 2022, more than 340,000 domestic products had been broadcast in the e-catalog. Indonesian President Joko Widodo targets at least one million local products to appear in e-catalogs this year.

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“We also continue to strive to encourage the delivery of local e-catalogs by all local governments. There are only 46 local governments that have broadcast local e-catalogs, for that we ask the Ministry of Home Affairs (Ministry of Home Affairs) to ensure that 496 local governments immediately broadcast local e-catalogs,” he said. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)