Vaccine Import Continues, Sri Mulyani Frees IDR 830 Billion Fee For 53 Million Doses Entered

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

AKARTA – The Ministry of Finance's Directorate General of Customs and Excise (Kemenkeu) emphasized that the government is still importing COVID-19 vaccines to handle the domestic pandemic.

Director of Communications and Guidance for Customs Service Users Nirwala Dwi Heryanto said that based on the latest data on May 27, 2022, it was known that the number of vaccines that had been imported from abroad was 53.48 million doses.

"This amount is the total vaccine that has been imported by the government, individuals and legal entities as well as non-legal entities," he told VOI last weekend.

According to Nirwala, the COVID-19 vaccine is an item that is one of the procurement priorities. For this reason, the government decided not to collect tax collections for this group.

"The realization of fiscal incentives in the form of exemption from import duty and PDRI (tax in the context of imports) on vaccine imports in 2022 (until 27 May 2022) was recorded at Rp. 830 billion," he said.

Previously, the Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani said that the government had not imported vaccines because the need for vaccines in early 2022 was still sufficient.

"Shopping for goods for handling the COVID-19 pandemic, which has decreased, shows that conditions continue to improve," he said in his presentation on the realization of the state budget some time ago.

Not only imported vaccines, the same facilities are also given to groups of medical equipment, such as PCR test kits, oxygen cylinders, and respiratory therapy devices with a realized value of exemption until March 2022 of IDR 174 billion.