Sri Mulyani Said, World Expenditure For Handling COVID-19 Reaches 11 Trillion US Dollars

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani (Photo: IDX Youtube screenshot)

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani said that all countries in the world have issued very large budgets to cope with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to him, this has been going on for the last 18 months and it is estimated that it will continue to happen along with the potential for the spread of a pandemic that cannot be completely handled.

"To deal with such a great pandemic, countries around the world have even spent 11 trillion US dollars. They use all their resources to protect their people, whether it's for health, social, and even politics," he said when he was a keynote speaker at the ESG Capital Market Summit held by the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), Tuesday, July 27.

The Minister of Finance added that the current pandemic is a real challenge for all nations in the world. The reason is, the situation that is developing is very different from any crisis that has been experienced in modern life before.

"No country can avoid the threat of this outbreak, the virus can continue to spread, even this virus is not static and constantly mutates so that the transmission rate also moves," he said.

In addition, the Minister of Finance also revealed that the response to the pandemic could bring negative sentiment to the financial management of a country. However, this unavoidable condition could be better managed through certain adjustments.

"The amount of spending in handling the pandemic can have an impact on widening the budget deficit. This must be managed through regulatory adjustments to suppress the threat of a pandemic," he stressed.

For information, the budget for handling the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia is included in the National Economic Election (PEN) scheme which is part of the state financial structure in the APBN.

Throughout 2020, the realization of PEN is known to be Rp. 579.8 trillion or 83.4 percent of the provided ceiling of Rp. 695.2 trillion.

Meanwhile, for the 2021 period, the PEN budget, which was originally planned at Rp699.43 trillion, was later increased to Rp744.75 trillion as the development of the COVID-19 delta variant is suspected to be the cause of the current increase in daily cases.