REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Vice President Jusuf Kalla responded to the statement of Gerindra Party General Chairman Prabowo Subianto over Indonesia's external debts that reached Rp1 trillion each day. Kalla noted that it was a common practice for any country to have debts, especially Indonesia, which is conducting infrastructure development.

"All countries that want to develop are the same as companies. All developing countries need funds. If we do not have capital, then we have to borrow. All countries did the same (borrow money), but they did in a different way," Vice President Kalla stated here on Tuesday.

In the United States, the vice president remarked that dollars were printed for loans, while the Japanese government borrowed from its citizens' pension funds. In Indonesia, as the rupiah did not sell overseas, the government borrowed money from the World Bank and the banking world.

Kalla emphasized that Indonesia's debts should not be a matter of concern, as long as the government is able to clear them. "Hence, it is not a matter of Rp1 trillion but of whether we are able to pay it? Right now, we are able to pay it. As long as we can pay it, then it is not the T (trillion) that matters, but whether we can pay it," Vice President Kalla clarified.

On the nominal value of the debts, Kalla said the Ministry of Finance had yet to calculate in detail the total debts of the government. "I have not calculated it in that way. The amount that we calculated is per year, and we do not count it per day. There is an additional Rp200 trillion, and there may be Rp300 trillion," he noted.

Earlier, during the launch of the book "the Indonesian Paradox," presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto remarked that the country's debts continued to rise, reaching a figure of Rp1 trillion per day. According to the Gerindra chief patron, the debt could threaten the nation's economic stability.

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