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Concerned over the high cost of regional elections, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Thursday sought recommendations from Islamic scholars on how to conduct them more efficiently.

“There’s concern and worry over the high cost of politics and democracy,” Yudhoyono said at the Presidential Palace before a meeting with members of the Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association (ICMI). “It is no secret that people worry over the high cost of regional elections, whether the district head, municipal head or governor elections.”

This year, 244 regional elections are scheduled. Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker Arif Wibowo, a member of the House of Representatives Commission II, which oversees home affairs, said the total budget for all regional elections is Rp 5 trillion ($550 million), with district budgets ranging from Rp 15 billion to Rp 80 billion, depending on the district’s size and number of voters.

He said Sumbawa district in West Nusa Tenggara, for example, had a budget of about Rp 18 billion, while that of the more heavily populated Cianjur in West Java was Rp 31 billion.

Some elections that had been scheduled for January were delayed because regional governments had failed to allocate funds for them.

Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi has said this year’s elections will proceed as planned, but future elections might be held simultaneously to save money. This change could be included in the draft of the new regional election law.

Hadar Gumay, chairman of the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), has proposed that regional elections be held in two sessions — one for regional legislatures (DPRD) and the other for governors and district or municipal heads — to make the logistics more manageable.