Farida Husna, Jakarta – The International Monetary Fund told the Indonesian parliament Wednesday that a new letter of intent will only be signed after the current state budget is revised, legislator Kwik Kian Gie said.

The former senior economic minister told journalists after a meeting with IMF's Asia Pacific Deputy Director Anoop Singh that the IMF also demanded the government implement all of the programs it promised in the last letter of intent before sending a new one.

"The IMF wants to know if parliament is ready to revise the state budget," Kwik said. "We told them that we are ready, but it depends when the government will propose the budget revision," he said.

The signing of a letter of intent, which details economic programs the government has promised to implement, is a prerequisite for the disbursement of the IMF's next $400 million installment to Indonesia.

The IMF has been holding up this installment since late December for various reasons, among them concerns that the government's plan to amend the Bank Indonesia Law may undermine the central bank's independence.

The assumptions and estimates used in the current state budget do not reflect the rupiah's present weakness either. The budget was based on an exchange rate of Rupiah 7,800 per US dollar, but the dollar is now close to Rupiah 11,000 due to worries over rising political tension.