Sri Mulyani Reveals 4 Aspects That Can Threaten World Economic Recovery

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati revealed four aspects that pose a threat to the world's economic recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, namely access to vaccines, inflation, energy crisis, and disruption of commodity supply.

Sri Mulyani said the four aspects were highlighted by a number of G20 countries at the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy.

"This is happening all over in countries whose recovery is very fast but then complications arise in the form of price increases (commodities), energy (crisis) and supply disruptions," she said at a press conference related to the online G20 meeting, quoted from Antara, Sunday 31 October.

Sri Mulyani explained that access to COVID-19 vaccines has not been evenly distributed throughout the world considering that there are still countries with less than 3 percent vaccination rates, such as countries in Africa.

What's more, the average vaccination rate in poor countries is only 6 percent of the total population, while developed countries are already above 70 percent and even close to 100 percent and have boosted the COVID-19 vaccine.

In addition, the rapid economic recovery has led to high demand for commodities, but it turns out that there are countries that are not ready to meet these needs, resulting in an increase in commodity prices or inflation.

This unpreparedness can be in the form of a supply disruption at the port, such as the absence of a driver who transports goods so that raw materials cannot be sent and cannot be produced by the industry.

"When demand recovered quickly and strongly, it turned out that the supply start did not follow suit," she said.

Not only that, the energy crisis occurred because investment in the energy sector, especially non-renewables, had fallen sharply while demand for energy soared as the economy recovered and entered winter.

"This has pushed high inflation in various countries and has become a threat to global economic recovery. Indonesia needs to be aware of this seepage," she said.