Jakarta. Indonesia’s finance minister said on Wednesday the government plans to raise by nearly 50 percent the income threshold at which individuals start to owe income tax, in a bid to boost purchasing power and economic growth.

Bambang Brodjonegoro told a parliamentary committee he is considering increasing the threshold for an unmarried adult to Rp 36 million ($2,728) a year from the current Rp 24.3 million.

He did not say what changes might be made for married couples or individuals with dependents.

Lifting the income level at which tax starts to be due “will increase people’s purchasing power although this could disrupt (state) revenue,” Brodjonegoro said.

Tax collection is a problem in Indonesia. Brodjonegoro said only 10 million of about 255 million people submitted tax reports last year.

He estimated about 45 million people are working and are supposed to pay some tax. This month, Indonesia reported first-quarter economic growth of 4.71 percent, the slowest since 2009.

There have been signs of waning consumption, ranging from weak car and motorcycle sales to a drop in Bank Indonesia’s April consumer confidence index to 107.4, the lowest since September 2013.

If the threshold on tax obligations is changed, the move could hinder the the ministry’s target of a jump in tax collection. Indonesia targets total tax revenue at Rp 1,489.3 trillion this year, up 30 percent from last year, which analysts call unrealistic.

But the minister’s plan “is good despite it affecting the overall tax collection,” said Yustinus Prastowo, an analyst with local think-tank Center for Indonesia Taxation Analysis.

“This will protect people in the lower income group and increase buying power.” Prastowo said that to fulfill the target, the government “can focus on collecting from higher income group.”

As of May 22, the state tax revenue reached Rp 416.8 trillion or 28 percent of the target, compared with Rp 422 trillion in the same period of 2014.

Reuters

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Jakarta. Indonesia is prepared to contribute at least $300 million to a new Islamic infrastructure bank that the Southeast Asian nation will co-found with Turkey and a Saudi-based multilateral lender, Indonesia’s finance minister said on Tuesday.

The idea for the proposed bank comes as Asian nations seek to boost cross-border lending for infrastructure, with China taking the lead with its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Improving Indonesia’s creaking infrastructure is one of President Joko Widodo’s main priorities. In his first budget in February, Joko allocated Rp 290 trillion ($21.96 billion) for capital spending.

“It will be like an infrastructure bank, but with a sharia approach, with the republic of Indonesia, Turkey and the Islamic Development Bank [IDB] as founding members,” Indonesia’s Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro told reporters.

Both Indonesia and Turkey have pledged to put at least $300 million into the bank. It was not immediately clear how much the IDB would contribute.

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan said the bank would be a “megabank”, the country’s state Anadolu Agency reported last week.

Indonesia has said it needs $455 billion during Joko’s five-year term to upgrade dilapidated facilities, and multilateral lenders have offered to provide more funds to the country.

On a visit to Jakarta last week, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim offered up to $12 billion in new financing to 2019.

Indonesia also plans to form a separate state-owned infrastructure bank, and it wants to play a big role at the AIIB, from which the country is expected to receive major funds.

The AIIB is also discussing with the IDB the use of Islamic financing as part of its lending tools, the IDB’s president Ahmad Mohamed Ali told Reuters.

Reuters

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