Jakarta – Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Monday that only 40 percent of Indonesian families could afford to buy houses due to increasing property prices, while another 40 percent of people could only buy houses with government subsidies.
"The remaining 20 percent could not afford to buy houses without significant assistance from the government. These are the facts of housing affordability for Indonesian people," said Sri Mulyani as reported by tempo.co when making a keynote speech at an investor gathering in Jakarta on Monday.
Indonesia needs between 800,000 and 1 million houses per year, said Sri Mulyani, adding that private developers contributed 40 percent to meeting that demand and the government around 20 percent. "Meanwhile, the remaining 40 percent were constructed individually by people," she added.
Sri Mulyani said she had not given serious attention to the housing issue, during her nearly eight months in office, saying that she had to pay more serious attention to making the 2016 state budget sustainable.
"My attention is still focused on the state budget after nearly eight months in office so that it will become an effective instrument," said Sri, who was appointed as a finance minister by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo when she was still executive director of the World Bank.
"With the state budget as an effective fiscal instrument, we hope we can support housing development," she added. (bbn)