Indonesia to set domestic fuel subsidy at fixed rate per litre

JAKARTA: Indonesia will set domestic fuel subsidy at a fixed rate per litre from Jan. 1, the chief economics minister said on Friday.

The change will make domestic fuel prices float according to market price, but the government's budget for fuel subsidies will be manageable, Sofjan Djalil, the chief economics minister, told Reuters.

"We're going to have another policy on oil price introduced before the end of the year, we're going to introduce fixed subsidy (per litre)," he said, adding the change would come into effect on Jan. 1.

President Joko Widodo, who took office in October, has confronted ballooning fuel subsidy costs by increasing fuel prices by more than 30 percent in November.