Good News From Sri Mulyani's Subordinates! Government Expands Wage Subsidy Assistance For Workers Because There Is A Remaining Budget PEN

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA – The government through the Deputy Minister of Finance, Suahasil Nazara, ensured that the Wage Subsidy Assistance (BSU) program would be expanded. This was conveyed by the Deputy Minister of Finance when holding a virtual press conference on PC-PEN Program Evaluation and Optimization of the 2021 PEN Program Budget today.

"There will be more recipients of this wage subsidy program throughout Indonesia", she said, Tuesday, October 26.

According to the Deputy Minister of Finance, this step is the government's strategy in encouraging the regional economy to bounce back after being depressed due to the spread of the delta variant in the middle of this year.

"This is in line with several areas that are still in the recovery stage after being hit by the delta variant some time ago", she said.

Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Finance, Suahasil's statement was based on the statement of the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto, who gave the green light to shift some allocations of National Economic Recovery (PEN) funds for the BSU program.

"Especially for Wage Subsidy Assistance, as stated by the Coordinating Minister, there is a remaining budget which will then be used for the expansion of BSU", he said.

For information, the 2021 PEN budget ceiling states that the Wage Subsidy Assistance program is allocated to 6.65 million workers who are deemed to need financial support to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

VOI itself noted that the Head of the Fiscal Policy Agency (BKF) of the Ministry of Finance, Febrio Kacaribu, on Wednesday, August 18, spoke about the IDR 8.8 trillion worker wage subsidy assistance which was distributed to 8.8 million workers with benefits worth IDR 1 million each.

The statement of Sri Mulyani's subordinates was made about the government's response to the impact of the explosion of daily COVID-19 cases a few months ago.