Friday, April 18, 2008
RI to Ask WB to Disburse US$1.2 Billion Program Loan
Source: Antara News
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia will ask for the disbursement of a US$1.2 billion program loan by the World Bank to cover its revised 2008 state budget deficit which reaches Rp94.5 trillion or about 2.1 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), a senior finance ministry official said.
Director General for External Debts Management of the Finance Ministry, Rahmat Waluyanto, said here on Friday that the total loans the government would withdraw amounted to US$2.9 billion, of which US$1.1 billion would come from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and US$500-600 million from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).
"The international institutions have different capacities in providing their loans," Waluyanto said when asked about the composition of the loans.
He said that some of the JBIC loans were provided with regard to Indonesia’s effort to handle the climate change issue.
"The program loan of US$300 million is linked to our commitment to handling climate change. It is part of the US$2.9 billion program loans this year," he said.
In the meantime, director of the Settlement, Accountancy and Evaluation Affairs of the Finance Ministry’s External Debts Management Directorate, Wijanarko said that the disbursement agreement of one of the World Bank’s program loans, namely the infrastructure development loan worth US$200 million would be signed in May 2008.
Actually, the loan should have been disbursed to the Indonesian government last year but it was postponed because the government failed to meet the policy matrix required by the lender, he said.
"The government has not yet refunded the mis-procurement of a World Bank’s project. Thus, the fund disbursement was diverted to the state budget for 2008 (instead of to the 2007 state budget)," he added.
To replace the program loans it failed to withdraw, the government was forced to disburse a standby loan of US$200 million with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) last year, he said.
