Government Prepares Bad Scenario To Face Omicron In 2022, Rp52 Trillion Fiscal Space Is Prepared

Illustration. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The government, through the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Airlangga Hartarto, acknowledged that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 could be a serious pressure for the health and economic sectors in 2022.

To anticipate this, the government has prepared anticipatory scenarios to prevent a worse impact. One that is now being optimized is the provision of a budget to be used next year.

“Earlier in the meeting with the President, we presented several scenarios. So if this scenario depends on the omicron effect. If there is an effect similar to the delta variant, the government will prepare fiscal space for handling COVID-19 and recovering the national economy, amounting to Rp52 trillion," he said when speaking at an online press conference, Monday, December 20 yesterday.

However, Airlangga hopes that the impact of the African variant will not be too damaging so that a number of target indicators can be achieved in the next year.

"Of course, if all of this is under control, we hope that economic growth will be in line with what is planned in the 2022 State Budget, which is 5.2 percent," he said.

As is known, the delta variant that attacked in the middle of this year sucked up quite a lot of resources. In early 2021, the government provided a National Economic Recovery (PEN) budget of IDR 699.4 trillion.

This number then rose to Rp. 744.7 trillion in response to the increase in daily cases due to the spread of the delta variant.

Meanwhile, as of December 10, the realization of PEN funds was IDR 519.69 trillion or equivalent to 69.8 percent of the provided ceiling. While the 2022 PEN is planned to amount to Rp. 414 trillion.