Faisal Basri: Salah's Government Only Depends On The COVID-19 Vaccine

Indef's senior economist, Faisal Basri. (Photo: Ministry of Communication and Information)

JAKARTA - Senior Economist lndef Faisal Basri views the financial sector as of semester I 2020 showing a positive growth rate. This means that the problem is not in the financial sector. However, on how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects.

Faisal said the plan to issue a government regulation in lieu of a financial reform law (Perppu) shows that the government is currently frustrated in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Faisal, there is no need to discuss the planned revision of Law (UU) number 23 of 1999 concerning Bank Indonesia (BI) at this time. The government must focus on handling COVID-19.

"The key, again, is not in the financial sector. The key is handling COVID-19. Now there is no short and medium term solution for handling COVID-19 before vaccines are available," he said, during an Indef discussion, Thursday, October 1.

Faisal said the government had wrongly relied on vaccines which were not necessarily effective in eliminating the COVID-19 outbreak from the country. Furthermore, Faisal said, the addition of new positive cases of COVID-19 was getting higher every day even though the government had tried to increase tracing.

"So far, the money for tracing runs out but the contact tracing is weak and that was admitted by the task force spokesperson. Until now, only 3 people have been tested positive for COVID-19. In Jakarta there are less than two. So what's the point of tracing? not accompanied by contact tracing, "he explained.

According to Faisal, the government's ability to carry out testing is only better than 12 countries where even positive cases of COVID-19 have reached 10,000.

"Okay, now it is reproduced until yesterday it has reached 12,000 per 1 million population. But that is only higher than 12 countries in the world with cases over 10,000, 10 countries in Africa with low and middle income, as well as two countries in Asia, Afghanistan and Myanmar, "he said.

Faisal said, if it continues like this it is not impossible that the new positive cases will get higher. Moreover, currently the cases are spreading to over 4,000. In fact, within days there were 50,000 new cases added.

"Initially 115 days add 50,000, now only 13 days (left) to add 250,000 and I estimate it only takes 11 days (in the future) to reach 300,000 cases," he said.

According to Faisal, the government must solve the real problem, namely COVID-19. Because, if it is not handled from the center of the problem, the impact will spread to all sectors.

"Let's overcome this COVID-19 if not all sectors will be crashed, all of this will be red, maybe the communication and information sector is (positive) because we are increasingly using this service (digital)," he said.

Meanwhile, UI Economist Fithra Faisal said, shocks in the financial sector related to BI independence and changes in OJK's authority should not have occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We don't need this right now and can even mess things up," he said.

According to him, the COVID-19 pandemic crisis occurred not from the external climate but rather a homogeneous one, which only distinguishes the recovery rate and policies in each country.