DKI Budget IDR 11 Trillion, One Month Is Not Enough To Meet Residents' Food Costs During Lockdown

JAKARTA - The DKI Jakarta Regional Revenue Agency (Bapenda) stated that the current budget of the DKI Provincial Government is around IDR 11 trillion amid the soaring COVID-19. Moreover, the discourse about strict quarantine alias lockdown has strengthened as a solution to suppress COVID.

"Yes (the existing funds) are about that much", said Secretary of the DKI Jakarta Bapenda, Pilar Hendrani, when contacted in Jakarta as reported by Antara, Monday, June 21.

Based on a rough calculation, the funds amounted to IDR 11,083,768,944,847 which was obtained from regional tax and levy revenues until the second quarter of 2021.

If the additional funds for the COVID-19 response which are owned by DKI are around IDR 5 trillion, it is still not sufficient for the cost of eating for a month for the 10.56 million residents of DKI.

Because to meet the food needs of the people of Jakarta, with an estimated one meal of IDR 20 thousand, it costs around IDR 19 trillion. This does not include other supporting costs for electricity and water as well as non-KTP (ID card) DKI residents residing in the capital city.

DKI Jakarta's financial condition is not in a good condition considering that it is currently impossible to withdraw revenue from business sectors that are subject to local taxes.

"So if you ask if there is money, yes there is, but enough or not enough, I can't comment because I don't know the amount of money needed. Because for the expenditure needs, it is with the DKI Jakarta Regional Development Planning Agency (Bappeda), which has the function for that", said Pilar.

However, Pilar said that in general compared to the same period in 2020, Jakarta's revenue this year was better than the previous year, which was at IDR 10,766,683,935,446.49.

Previously, the government was asked to consider imposing quarantine and abandoning the application of Micro Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM), due to the spread of COVID-19 again soaring.

Public policy expert Achmad Nur Hidayat disagrees if it is said that the spike in the Indian variant of COVID-19 is due to the people's fault, because this variant has entered the Southeast Asia region some time before.