Coordinating Minister Airlangga Receives The Global Fund's Visit, Discusses Opportunities To Increase Cooperation

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto. (Dok ekon.go.id)

JAKARTA - The government, through the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Airlangga Hartarto, has just received an official visit from the Executive Director of The Global Fund Peter Sands in Jakarta.

During the meeting, Airlangga revealed that the government and The Global Fund discussed several opportunities for further collaboration.

According to Airlangga, Indonesia and the international donor agency had previously agreed on a number of important collaborations, such as financing for 18 domestic laboratories for handling COVID-19 and a soft loan worth US$88 million.

"We and The Global Fund have also taken the initiative to explore opportunities for cooperation with the preparation and implementation of The Global Fund's 7th Replenishment Conference." He said in a press statement on Friday, June 24.

Airlangga added that several other sectors that were included in the discussion radar this time were the study of health digitalization transformation projects, health funding mechanisms, and transformation of health service units, as well as research and development in Indonesia.

For information, The Global Fund is the world's largest funder of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria prevention, treatment and care programs based in Geneva, Switzerland.

As an effort to deal with the pandemic, this institution has contributed about 5 billion US dollars.

"Especially for Indonesia, The Global Fund has contributed to the treatment of tuberculosis which requires a funding contribution of around 6.9 billion US dollars," he said.

On this occasion, Airlangga also conveyed that The Global Fund congratulated the G20 Presidency of Indonesia.

Present to accompany the Coordinating Minister for the Economy at this meeting were the Raden Pardede Assistance Team and the Assistant Deputy for American and Pacific Economic Cooperation as Acting Deputy for International Economic Cooperation Coordination Irwan Sinaga.