The Bank Indonesia (BI) board of governors will become the highest paid state officials in the country, with its top chief expecting to bring home at least Rp 141.32 million (US$14,420) per month.

BI Governor Burhanuddin Abdullah said on Tuesday the board shared tasks with the state and the House of Representatives to apply an efficient budget, but added that major changes in the pay packages would disrupt the central bank's overall remuneration system.

To make the pay package somewhat more palatable for the public, he said, BI would instead cut several additional allowances, which are part of the central bank's 2006 budget proposal. Those would have pushed the governors' average monthly salary to Rp 224 million.

The package is comprised of basic salary, a contingency allowance, a performance allowance and unspecified allowances.

"My proposal is that we take off the two leave allowances, the three incentives and we get only one holiday bonus," Burhanuddin stated during a hearing with House Commission XI on finance.

The senior deputy governor is to get Rp 118.26 million per month, while the six deputy governors will receive Rp 107.28 million each per month.

The amounts will make the BI governors the highest paid state officials.

Critics, including the President and the Vice President, have said that the existing remuneration system for state officials had to be revised in order to comply with the merit system and the principles of fairness.

A new law on remuneration will likely be enacted soon, with the President earning the most. As of now, the President's monthly salary is Rp 62.7 million, the Vice President's is Rp 42.2 million and ministers take home Rp 18.6 million each.

This is the first time for the central bank to consult with and seek such approval from the House on its remuneration scale as a consequence of Law No. 3/2004 on Bank Indonesia.

No data was made available on how much BI governors had been paid each month. Before the enactment of the law, the BI governors drew up their own salary system.

While it is different than the formulation recommended by Commission XI, the BI's new proposal will likely be the one that is applied.

BI's new proposal is 31.6 percent lower than the initial one, and greater than the 29.8-percent cut recommended by the House Commission.

In its recommendation, the Commission altered several figures in allowances and deleted leave allowances. It also proposed that the monthly performance allowance be optional based on a review by the House.

But it turned out that Commission members had mistook it as a performance-based reward, while BI said it was substantially a sort of functional allowance that comes with their position.

The Commission also warned BI chiefs to be more selective about foreign trips in 2006, which has reportedly been proposed to cost Rp 1.4 billion for each, but without severely affecting BI's work at the international level.

Additionally, the central bank executives often take along relatives on such trips and pay for their expenses using state funds, legislators revealed