Jakarta. Presidential spokesman Hasan Nasbi recently denied that Indonesia would halve the state spending allocation for the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), which is in charge of issuing early tsunami alerts.

President Prabowo Subianto had ordered his ministries and government officials to cut spending by Rp 306.7 trillion (around $18.8 billion) for the current fiscal year. BMKG originally got to spend no more than Rp 2.8 trillion. According to media reports, the agency would have to halve its spending to Rp 1.4 trillion. On Tuesday, Hasan denied that BMKG had to slash their budget by an overwhelming 50 percent.

“It’s not true that BMKG has to face a 50-percent budget efficiency measure,” Hasan said.

He added: “We will make sure that climate mitigation will run optimally”.

According to Hasan, the cost-cutting measures will not affect the employee’s productivity, including their wage. He also claimed that the budget allotted for public services and social aid would not undergo any adjustments following Prabowo’s instructions.

BMKG’s spokesman Muslihhuddin recently said that the massive budget cuts could take a toll on the agency’s operations. A smaller budget could diminish its maintenance capacity by 71 percent, thus affecting their ability to detect weather conditions, air quality, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Their accuracy is also expected to drop from 90 to 60 percent. The speed of their early tsunami alerts will also drop from 3 minutes to 5 minutes or more. BMKG had also requested Prabowo to exempt the agency from the budget cuts.