Faisal Basri Regretted The Government's Uncertainty In Handling The COVID-19 Pandemic

Capture the screen of Senior economist Indef Faisal Basri in a virtual discussion entitled 'Economic Costs of Facing the COVID-19 Crisis'. (Mery Handayani / VOI)

JAKARTA - The corona virus or COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia has been more than a month, but the government's handling of this outbreak is not considered serious. Thus, the impact on economic recovery will be longer.

Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) senior economist Faisal Basri said economic recovery would not work if efforts to deal with the COVID-19 virus were not carried out properly.

Economic recovery, said Faisal, really depends on how the government is handling the pandemic. He said, this method is an important key and determinant of success.

"As sophisticated as the handling of the economy is, it will be useless by handling COVID-19 which is as amateurish as it is now," he said, in a virtual discussion entitled 'Economic Costs of Facing the COVID-19 Crisis', Friday, April 24.

Faisal believed that the national economy would react positively if there were clear efforts to overcome this outbreak. Along with this, investor confidence in Indonesia will also increase.

"My point is that the economy will wait, it will react after it is clear what the government is doing to deal with this pandemic. So dealing with this pandemic is unclear, so it will be more difficult no matter how much stimulus is disbursed. Like a leaky bucket, it is useless," he said. .

Perppu 1/2020 Cannot Save the Economy

As is known, after it was announced that Indonesia had positive cases in early March, the government responded with various policies. One of them is to prepare for handling the financial sector if the impact of this virus continues by issuing Government Regulation in Lieu of Law (Perppu) No.1 of 2020 concerning State Financial Policy and Financial System Stability for Handling the Corona Pandemic.

However, Faisal assessed that the Perppu did not reflect the handling of corona in the country and was ineffective. This is because the Perppu was issued not to focus on handling COVID-19, but rather a Perppu on the financial sector.

"There is no doubt if the real sector is hit. So again my point is that we can maintain it as well as possible, plan as well as possible, and hopefully the Perppu that comes out is for the handling of the pandemic. But the Perppu that comes out is about the financial sector, handling the pandemic is not clear, "he stressed.

Faisal also questioned the party responsible for handling the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. Because, everything was not done in good coordination.

"Who is in command? Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan? Head of the Task Force, or who? Everyone talks," he said.

For your information, based on official data released by the task force as of Friday, April 24, there were an addition of 436 new cases of COVID-19 patients, so that a total of 8,211 people were positively infected. Meanwhile, the number of recovered patients also increased by 42 to 1,002 people. The increase in the death rate increased by 42 people, so that a total of 689 people died from COVID-19.