ADDITIONL DEFENSE BUDGET BADLY NEEDED

By Andi Abdussalam

Jakarta, June 12 (ANTARA) - The crash of another military aircraft on Friday, namely An Air Force Puma helicopter in Bogor, West Java, which killed two and injuring five servicemen, is sending a strong message that the government needs to pay attention to the replacement of aging aircraft and provide enough budget.

        Friday's crash of the Air Force helicopter is another fresh incident that followed a Hercules C-130 of the same service which went down in Magetan district, East Java, killing about 100 passengers last month.

        Also still fresh in mind was the burst into flames of an Air Force Fokker-27 plane which killed scores of paratroop trainees at Sastra Negara airport in Bandung, West Java, just a month earlier.

        These incidents indicated that increased budget is badly needed for the maintenance of the aging equipment, but the government is currently short of funds.

        So far, the government has provided only one third of the needed budget to maintain and preserve the military's equipment. According to the House of Representatives, the ideal budget for the military is about Rp100 trillion. However the government was only able to provide one third of it, or about Rp33 trillion.

        For this year, the Defense Ministry is proposing Rp1 trillion for immediate funding of the military equipment through the 2009 revised budget. It is expected to increase the preparedness and readiness of the Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI)'s main weaponry system.

        Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said here on Friday that of the proposed fund, about 70 percent would be used for the maintenance and preservation of TNI's main weaponry equipment.

        "Increasing budget for maintenance and preservation of military equipment is the main focus of our attempt to maintain the technical worthiness of TNI's main armament system," the minister said.

        The minister said that the proposed additional budget for the defense sector was now being discussed by the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) and the finance ministry.

        Sudarsno said that in the past five years he had reminded several times that the government's budget for the defense sector was limited. After all, priorities were always given to other sectors such as economy and people's welfare improvement.

       Therefore, each time we propose a minimum defense budget of Rp100 trillion, the realization had always been one third of it, namely about Rp33 trillion to Rp35 trillion.

        With a budget of that size, the ministry of defense has to be accurate in using the existing funds. After all, the fund allocation still has to be divided into the three services of the army, navy and the air force, the Ministry of Defense and the TNI headquarters.'

        The funds are used to finance routine expenditures, good procurements and capital expenditures for each of the three sectors, the minister said.

        In the meantime, the House of Representatives (DPR)'s Commission I has agreed to increase the budget for defense and the military (TNI) by Rp10 trillion in 2010.

        "We agreed to increase the budget for defense and TNI by Rp10 trillion in 2010 to promote education and training, maintenance and procurement of main weapons system equipment," House Commission I chairman Theo L Sambuaga said.

        The 2009 budget for the ministry of defense and the TNI totalled Rp33.6 trillion and in the first quarter of the year they recieved an additional budget of Rp38.66 billion to support the Waspada (alert) strategy intelligence operations and 28.10 percent of it had been distributed to organizational units of the ministry or TNI.

        According to Presidential special assistant for defense affairs Irvan Edison, the defense budget for the military (TNI) will be made based on existing need and on priority scale determined by prevailing security conditions.

        "The posture of the country's defense will be adjusted to the security condition Indonesia is facing. If there is no security threat, the budget will be increased for the maintenance of equipment and regional monitoring," Edison said.

        "But with the case of several incidents befalling on the military where a number of its planes has crashed, and in the face of the Ambalat tensions, the government needs to increase its defense budget. But still, it has to be adjusted to the general budget needs," he said.

        Last month, the ministry of defense said it would likely receive an additional budget of between Rp5 trillion and Rp6 trillion in 2010.

        Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said after a limited cabinet meeting at the presidential office that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had agreed at the meeting that the ministry's budget had to be increased in 2010.

        "Although we were also of the view that the ideal budget of around Rp120 trillion a year would never be met because of the current crisis and budget shortage," he said.

        He said the government had also agreed that in the next two years there must be a rise in the ministry's budget which would be aimed at promoting operational readiness and maintenance of equipment "to ensure the safety of all weapons systems in all forces."

        The additional budget of between Rp5 trillion and Rp6 trillion was also aimed at promoting operational readiness and maintenance of equipment.

        "From the present budget of Rp33.6 trillion we will secure up to around Rp800 billion a year for maintenance or ideally next year above Rp1.2 trillion for operational readiness and maintenance," he said.

        House Speaker Agung Laksono said that ideally Indonesia's defense budget should total Rp100 trillion.

        "According to a defense expert in the current conditions Indonesia needs to allocate more than Rp100 trillion for its defense budget," he said when responding to an army chopper that crashed in Cianjur, West Java, recently. ***4***

        (T.A014/a/H-NG/a014) (T.A014/A/A014/A/A014) 13-06-2009