Trade Minister Lutfi: World's COVID-19 Vaccine Needs Reaching 14.2 Billion Doses, But Only 413 Million Are Produced

Minister of Trade, M. Lutfi. (Photo: Doc. Ministry of Trade)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Trade (Kemendag) said that the world's economic recovery was hampered by the production and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. Therefore, the government continues to encourage equal distribution through international trade institutions.

Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi said his party was conducting international lobbying through the 21 economic cooperation forums in the Pacific Ocean ring which are members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

Based on the APEC study, Lutfi continued, until now there is still a very significant gap between vaccine production and vaccination needs for the world community. Where the total world vaccine needs reach 14.2 billion doses, while global vaccine production currently only reaches around 413 million doses or 2.9 percent of the world's total needs.

Furthermore, said Lutfi, this gap is also exacerbated by the unequal distribution of vaccines in the world.

"APEC members play an important role in strengthening vaccine trade facilitation, including increasing vaccine production and equitable distribution. Strengthening vaccine trade facilitation needs to be carried out to accelerate economic recovery and ensure easy access to vaccines and related products for the community," he said in an official statement, quoted on Tuesday. June 8th.

In addition to the low global vaccine production, said Lutfi, the gap in vaccine distribution is also influenced by the bottleneck in the issue of intellectual property rights (IPR). Thus, as a leading economic forum in the Asia Pacific region, Apec plays a strategic role in supporting the discussion of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Waiver proposal which is currently being rolled out at the World Trade Organization (WTO) forum.

The TRIPS Waiver proposal, said Lutfi, emphasized the temporary suspension of the application of intellectual property rights (IPR) to encourage the production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines as a form of global solidarity in accelerating the handling of the pandemic. Because vaccines are needed to restore the economy, trade, and tourism.

"For that, we need vaccines for everyone, good vaccine standards including the development of digital solutions for travel licenses, as well as easing the obligation to register IPR licenses that can support developing economies to produce vaccines independently in order to meet their needs. So that more lives are saved," he explained.