Jakarta. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo does not want Indonesia's regents to spend the hard-earned government money on imports.

Jokowi was speaking in front of the country’s regents at the Indonesian Regency Administrations Association (Apkasi) forum in Jakarta on Wednesday. The outgoing president claimed that domestically produced goods only represented 41 percent of what the city and regency governments purchased in their public procurement.

“Forty-one percent of domestic goods usage is a small number. That means the rest of what you have bought are imports. Please be careful. It is not easy to collect state revenue. We have to collect taxes, and not to mention the non-tax state revenue, dividends, and royalties,” Jokowi told the regents.

“Our finance minister [Sri Mulyani] has to collect every cent of that, which eventually accumulates into our state revenue. [The minister] then transfers [part of] the money to the regional governments who spend them on imports. The ones that are enjoying the benefits are other countries. ... Remember how hard it is to earn this money, so please buy domestic products in all your public procurement," Jokowi said.

As of May 31, the Finance Ministry has distributed around Rp 321 trillion (around $19.8 billion) to the sub-national governments across the archipelago so far this year, the government data showed. This is about 37.4 percent of what the ministry has allocated for the sub-national governments in 2024, which amounts to Rp 857.6 trillion. 

Indonesia has maintained a trade surplus for 49 months in a row since May 2020. Indonesian imports had reached $19.4 billion in May, up by 14.8 percent compared to the previous month. The country saw a $2.9 billion surplus in May, according to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS).