"The government will continue to direct its development strategy to boost economic growth and stable community revenues," Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said.
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The government has expressed its commitment to increasing the quality of economic growth in an attempt to help reduce poverty, unemployment and gaps.

"The government will continue to direct its development strategy to boost economic growth and stable community revenues," Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said here on Tuesday.

To achieve quality economic growth, she noted, the government will create more job opportunities as part of its efforts to improve peoples welfare fairly.

With regard to the 2018 fiscal policy, the government has set the theme "Strengthening Fiscal Management to Accelerate Fair Growth".

The fiscal policy was directed to address several development challenges, including poverty and gaps reduction, improvement of productivity and fiscal capacity, as well as maintaining macroeconomic stability.

"To support implementation, the fiscal policy should be able to control risks both ishort and long term. In addition, the policy should be more productive, efficient, and sustainable," she stated.

The minister remarked that the governments efforts could be realized through, among others, maintaining a conducive business climate in order to encourage economic activities that create jobs, maintaining public purchasing power, increasing the effectiveness of State Budget in terms of revenues and expenditures (subsidies and targeted social assistance ), and the basic needs of the poor.

An annual economic growth rate of five percent is not adequate for the country to boost its peoples welfare, Bank Indonesia (BI) Governor Agus Martowardojo earlier stated.

"We know that the five percent growth is not sufficient to promote the peoples welfare, and so the economy must grow above five percent. To achieve it, we need structural reforms, both in the fiscal and monetary sectors as well as the financial sector," he noted during the launch of a book titled "Study of Financial Stability" here on Wednesday.

The governor said the efforts to achieve an economic growth of over seven percent must be accompanied by steps to maintain macroeconomic stability and the financial system in a way that the economy will grow at a higher pace.

"If we want the economy to grow, we must ensure that it is strong, sound, and sustainable. Sound economic growth cannot be achieved if there is no macroprudential and financial system stability," he emphasized.

He pointed out that the Indonesian economy remains stable, but the country needs to stay alert for global challenges and uncertainties, which will still cast a shadow on the Indonesian economy.

The BI has anticipated global economic pressure by strengthening the macroprudential policy and adopting several strategies, including intensifying supervision.

Other strategies adopted by BI are strengthening crisis management and expanding communication and coordination with the Committee for Financial System Stability and consulting with the House of Representatives on a mix policy.(*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
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