Government Ready To Add Budget To Handling Sumatra Aceh Floods

Victims of the Aceh flood disaster Sumatra received food assistance (ANTARA)

JAKARTA - The government ensures that there is still a budget for handling floods and landslides that hit Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra, and is ready to increase allocations for the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) if necessary.

Minister of Finance Purbaya Yudhi Sadive stated that currently BNPB still holds ready-to-use funds (DSP) in a fairly safe amount for emergency response operations.

"In BNPB there are still around Rp. 500 billion (funds) in BNPB that are ready (to be used)," said Purbaya Yudhi Sadive when met by the media crew, quoted by Antara, Tuesday, December 2.

However, he did not deny the possibility of adding the operational budget, given the impact of disasters that occurred on a large scale up to three provinces.

He said the mechanism for increasing the budget through the Additional Expenditure Budget (ABT) was ready to be activated at any time according to the needs in the field.

Purbaya also asked BNPB not to hesitate to submit a request if the available funds began to run low and ensure that it would immediately process the disbursement of the ABT funds when requested.

He said that the allocation would be taken from the disaster emergency post which had been prepared in the State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBN).

"If later we need additional funds, we are also ready to add and it is already in the budget," he said.

Purbaya did not mention specific figures regarding the amount of additional budget that could be given because it depended on the assessment and official request from BNPB.

However, he ensured that the state's fiscal capacity was very adequate to bear the costs of handling the disaster, including if later there were proposals for rehabilitation and social protection needs for the victims.

"It depends on what the submission from BNPB looks like, but the money is enough," he added.

The Operations Control Center of the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) previously reported that as of Monday (1/2) there were a total of 33,620 affected residents, 447 dead, and 399 still missing.

Of these, 33,173 people were successfully evacuated safely.