Sri Mulyani: The World Loses 15 Trillion US Dollars Due To COVID-19, How Much Indonesia?

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that the losses suffered by all countries in the world as a result of having to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic for six months had reached around 9 trillion US dollars to 15 trillion US dollars.

"This is equivalent to nine to 15 times the size of Indonesia's economy. An impact was so devastating in less than six months," said Sri Mulyani as quoted by Antara, Thursday, October 8.

Sri Mulyani stated that the loss was in line with the rate of world economic growth which is predicted to experience a deep contraction this year, namely in the range of 3-5 percent.

"Initially in 2020 the world economy was estimated to grow by 3.4 percent, now it has turned into a contraction of 3 percent to 5 percent," said Sri Mulyani.

Meanwhile he said the global panic due to the COVID-19 pandemic had implications for Indonesia, such as the outflow of foreign capital or capital outflows in the stock market which reached IDR140 trillion.

Not only that, Sri Mulyani revealed that world panic had also caused the turmoil and the fall of the JCI, the Government Securities (SBN) market, and the domestic foreign exchange (forex) market.

He continued that this also contributed to the decline in economic activity and created a tremendous threat to human safety and welfare, which was reflected in the increasing number of unemployment and poverty.

"The threat of unemployment and poverty in all countries has increased sharply in a short time," said Sri Mulyani.

It does not stop there, social, economic and financial system stability is also under threat due to the bankruptcy of the business world in all sectors ranging from transportation, hotels, restaurants, manufacturing, trade, to construction.

"Various efforts to overcome COVID-19 with vaccine discovery efforts are still in the process of being developed and require time and complicated preparation for implementation. Export, import and trade activities between countries have declined," he said.

However, Sri Mulyani stated that currently the whole world is trying to overcome the crisis by finding a COVID-19 vaccine, which requires a long and complicated process and preparation.

"This combination causes uncertainty in the economy and financial sector to be very high, while the predictability level of COVID-19, both in terms of impact and time for completion, is still very low," said Sri Mulyani.