Council speaker blames central government for regency row

Speaker of the Kutai Kertanegara regency council in East Kalimantan suspected the central government of deliberately providing conflicting figures of the revenues to be obtained by the East Kutai and Kutai Kertanegara regencies this year to make them quarrel each other, local daily Kaltim Post reported.

Bachtiar Effendi said the row between both regencies would thus give a pretext for the central government to withhold the disbursement of the revenue.

"I am suspecting that the central government is deliberately making both regencies to quarrel each other so that it has a pretext to slow down or delay the disbursement of the regional budgets," Bachtiar said.

Under the Intergovernmental Fiscal Balance Law No. 25/1999, which was implemented early this year, regencies will receive a larger share in the government's revenue from the development of their natural resources.

In his speech while delivering the 2001 state budget, President Abdurrahman Wahid said that East Kutai and Kutai Kertanagara would receive around Rp 606 billion (US$1=Rp 11,208) and Rp 573 billion respectively.

However, a confidential report, which was believed to be issued by the ministry of finance, stated that East Kutai will only receive Rp 138 billion, while Kutai Kertanegara will obtain 10 times higher around Rp 1.04 trillion.

This has angered East Kutai. The regency's top officials have gone to Jakarta to seek for explanation for the conflicting figures.

Bachtiar asked both regencies to stop the quarrel so that the central government had not pretext to delay the disbursement of the budgets of the regencies.

Both regencies could start settling their dispute after the disbursement of the budgets. (*)