Government 'Burns Money' IDR 500 Trillion, People Are Invited To Awareness Of The Importance Of A Green Economy

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA – The government through the Ministry of Finance encourages the public to continue to increase awareness of the importance of using environmentally friendly energy to support the development of a green economy in the country.

The Minister of Finance, Sri Mulyani, said that the government was continuing to pursue this strategic step considering that the burden of subsidies and energy compensation was still increasing. According to her, the allocation of funds has increased significantly this year in line with the increasingly high prices of important world commodities.

“The current energy subsidy budget spends IDR 200 trillion for one year only because the current energy increase is extraordinary. IDR 500 trillion is real money that we might burn for electricity, for 3-kilogram LPG, for Pertalite, diesel, kerosene, and Pertamax, although yesterday's increase does not reflect the economic price", said the Minister of Finance.

In detail, the state treasurer explained that the subsidy budget reached around IDR 150 trillion with a compensation budget of IDR 370 trillion.

"Imagine if the subsidy budget was used to reduce the impact of climate change, it would have taken an unusually large portion", she said.

Therefore, the Minister of Finance said that fiscal policy will certainly lead to the diversification of the use of environmentally friendly energy.

"That's why new and renewable energy has emerged which is important today. We continue to support various battery-based industrialization processes. Now, this battery is then charged with electricity, while the electricity is from new and renewable energy", she said.

The editor noted that the  State Budget (APBN) has provided a fairly large climate budget tagging and has become one of the national programs.

In 2021, the state will allocate a budget of IDR 104 trillion. This figure tends to be consistent with previous periods, with details in the 2016 APBNP of IDR 72.4 trillion, the 2017 APBN of IDR 95.6 trillion, and the 2018 APBN of IDR 109.7 trillion, and the 2020 State Budget of IDR 77 trillion.

"However, we still need a lot of energy to keep growing, but we will also continue to reduce CO2 emissions", closed the Minister of Finance, Sri Mulyani.