Impacts of village fund on post disaster economic recovery in rural Aceh Indonesia

Up to the present time, the utilization of the Village Fund in Indonesia has mainly focused on infrastructure development. Meanwhile, the Village Fund is allowed to support post-disaster recovery projects in rural communities; among other strategies, agricultural economic empowerment is the most preferable. This study aims to analyze village dependence on the Village Funds after the Pidie Jaya earthquake in 2016 and determine the factors affecting post-disaster agricultural economic empowerment in Pidie Jaya Regency, Aceh-Indonesia. A multi-stage interviews and field surveys were conducted by involving key persons related to the Village Fund implementation in Pidie Jaya Regency. The Village Budget annual data from 19 villages during 2015-2019 was analyzed and estimated using a panel data analysis. The results show that the villages' dependence level on the Village Fund is substantial, whereas the spending for agricultural economic empowerment projects was less significant. The Village Fund estimated variable has no significant impact on agricultural economic empowerment. This finding reveals a lack of priority for agricultural economic empowerment projects as one of the recovery strategies in the Pidie Jaya Regency after the earthquake in 2016.