GOVT TO LAUNCH FISCAL STIMULUS PACKAGE ON MARCH 1

Jakarta, Feb 25 (ANTARA) - The government plans to launch a Rp73.3 trillion fiscal stimulus package on March 1 to tackle the looming impact of the global financial crisis, a minister said.
"Last night DPR (the House of Representatives) approved the fiscal stimulus. In the next five days, all the documents related to the program will be completed," Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said at a State-Owned Companies (SOC) Executive Breakfast Meeting here on Wednesday.
Sri Mulyani who is also acting coordinating minister for economic affairs said part of the fiscal stimulus related to taxes had actually been carried out since January 2009 when a new income tax law began to take effect.
There was a minor change in the fiscal stimulus in which infrastructure expenditure had been raised by Rp2 trillion to Rp73.3 trillion from Rp71.3 trillion as proposed by the government previously, she said.
The Rp73.3 trillion fiscal stimulus package consisted of taxation stimulus worth Rp56.3 trillion and state expenditure stimulus worth Rp17 trillion, she said.
The taxation stimulus consisted of reduced tax tariffs, the government-borne value added tax and import duties and incentives related to income tax under articles 21 and 25, she said.
The state expenditure stimulus meanwhile consisted of infrastructure expenditure worth Rp12.2 trillion and direct subsidy and energy subsidy worth Rp4.8 trillion, she said.
She said many countries had implemented fiscal stimulus programs as a cyclical counter policy because the global economic slowdown had affected the world including Indonesia.
The stimulus package is expected to increase a deficit in the 2009 state budget to Rp139.5 trillion from Rp51.3 trillion previously or to 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) from 1 percent of the GDP.