The Increase of Indonesian Government Health Budget: Its

Presenter: Ede Surya Darmawan, University of Indonesia

Abstract

In the last five years, Indonesian health budget had increased significantly. It can be seen from the increase of health budget provided by the Government of Indonesia from US$ 2 per capita in the year 2000 becoming US$ 10 per capita in the year 2008. This increase gave a hope to the providers, implementors and executors of health program that it will give greater budget allocation for the health programs.

The basic question here is about the allocation and uses of the increased government health budget, whether or not it fulfills the need of health programs costs. This study is intended to analyze health budget increase and its allocation and uses, which is related to the real cost had spent by health programs to increase community health status.

This is a literature and meta-analysis study on twenty studies in 1995-2008 which have topic on health budget and health financing in Indonesia.

The interim results showed that, generally, health budget provided by Ministry of Health increased significantly. Several provinces and districts has also enlarged their health budget. Yet, when we analyze the health expenditures, the fund was spent to supporting activities and administration cost rather than main activities and operational cost of the programs. As a result, the increase of health budget was not followed by the improvement of health services performance. There were many factors related to this condition such as the ability of the health staffs to develop health planning, and political pressure at national, provincial or district level.

Recommendation will be further developed after having several discussions with health experts and practitioners. Preliminary recommendation is, there should be health policy which requires health offices at national, provincial or district level to conduct cost analysis routinely and to have training on ‘evidence based health planning’ in order to equip their health staffs with the ability on constructing the health finance planning.