Jokowi urges bureaucratic rivalries to end

JAKARTA. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has called on his Cabinet ministers to put their egos aside to work together and make sure that their respective prioritized programs are successful.

"We have to let go of these sectoral egos. Our ‘in-the-box’ ways of thinking tend to be an obstacle to our objectives," he said just before a closed-door Cabinet meeting was set to take place at Bogor Palace in West Java on Tuesday.

The National Planning Development Board (Bappenas) should also avoid getting trapped in these bureaucratic rivalries, the President added.

Bappenas and the Finance Ministry needed to ensure that the government fully implemented the "funds-follow-programs" budget allocation system in order to ensure the success of its prioritized programs, Jokowi added.

Starting from the 2017 state budget, the government will implement project-based budget allocations, which determines ministries' budgets based on the government's priority projects instead of the other way around as was previously done.

"[We need to] simplify complicated processes, especially administrative ones," he said. (Fedina S. Sundaryani)