Sri Mulyani: Like It Or Not, Foreign Cooperation Is Needed During The Pandemic

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati believes that multilateral cooperation has an important role in the process of economic recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic because this crisis is a global problem.

"Currently there is a pandemic, once again showing that we cannot work alone," said Sri Mulyani when she was a panelist at the B20 Saudi Arabia Summit. It was virtually quoted from Antara, Tuesday, October 17.

According to him, entering the vaccination era in order to get out of the pandemic requires stronger cooperation between countries or multilateral cooperation.

He is optimistic that multilateral cooperation in handling global problems such as the COVID-19 pandemic will make it more efficient, better and transparent.

The former Managing Director of the World Bank added that when a country wants to ensure that its country is safe with vaccinations, that country cannot just shut down, but must continue to work together because of human mobility.

For that, he continued, communication and cooperation between countries is still needed, one of which is to ensure access to vaccines for all countries.

"So you can't let other countries have no vaccines and let them fight and then one country will be fine. That's not a good way of economic recovery," he said.

Not only a pandemic problem, the issue of climate change to disruption of digital technology, especially trade, is also a global problem that requires multilateral cooperation.

"So like it or not, believe it or not with multilateral cooperation, dealing with this problem must be through global cooperation, because it is impossible to solve it alone," he said.

Sri Mulyani became one of the panelists at the B20 Saudi Arabia Summit entitled Redesigning Multilateralism for a new era.

Also attending the virtual opportunity were the Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgiva, Secretary General of the United Nations Trade and Development Agency (UNCTAD) Mukhisa Kituyi and Former Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Roberto Azevedo.