Regulation of the use of excise allocation fund up to now does not explicitly cover infrastructure development. However, the allocation of this fund can be used to support medium enterprises in improving the economy, particularly for tobacco and cigarette industry.
According to Dwi Ardianta Kurniawan, S.T, M.Sc., the amount of Revenue Sharing Fund of Tobacco Excise is relatively small for the overall infrastructure budget, but it is quite significant for road infrastructure budget. "This fund is predicted to keep increasing. However, funding for infrastructure, especially roads, is still very limited," said Dwi Ardianta at the Center for Transportation and Logistics Studies, Thursday (2/12), at the monthly seminar entitled Assessing the Use of Revenue Sharing Fund of Tobacco Excise for Infrastructure Development in Yogyakarta.
As a researcher, Dwi Ardianta admitted that the budgeting of Revenue Sharing Fund of Tobacco Excise for road infrastructure that belongs to central and local government is difficult to make. One possible cause is there is no legal basis for budgeting. "Budgeting for road infrastructure is still possible to make if it supports to improve the economy of tobacco farmers and tobacco industry," he explained.
Dwi Ardianta added that learning from the case of East Java, Minister of Finance’s Regulation Number 20/PMK.07/2009 on Use of Revenue Sharing of Tobacco Excise can be translated into 108 sectors of activity. Under this condition, Revenue Sharing of Tobacco Excise is very possible for the construction of road infrastructure. "However, the item is in form of roads maintenance with labor-intensive model," he said.
This discussion also revealed that Yogyakarta Special Province received excise revenue sharing fund amounting to 4 billion rupiah per year. Nearly 85% of the funds were absorbed to sustain health programs, especially for the treatment of people’s lung health in Mantrijeron area of Yogyakarta.