Through Many Crisiss, Indonesia's Economy Is Proven To Be Resilience

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Ministry of Finance)

Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani said that the struggle towards the ideals of a country will definitely not be faced with an easy, straight, and smooth path. According to him, almost all countries in the world must struggle in order to get the desired target.

"It is a necessity," he said at the Indonesia Data and Economic Conference (IDE) forum, quoted Friday, July 21.

The Minister of Finance explained that every country needs to learn from every event, historical phenomena, and geopolitical atmosphere to improve itself and prepare for the various challenges that will definitely be faced.

As for Indonesia's cases, this country has experienced three shocks or crises and has always been able to recover and overcome these various crises. First, when there was a financial crisis in 1997-1998. The second crisis also occurred during the global economic crisis in 2009-2010 and the latest was the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Indonesia learned a lot from the 1997-1998 crisis which gave birth to the reform era and even caused total changes in the management of state finances," he said.

The Minister of Finance also emphasized that in every crisis the government always places state finances as the main and first instrument to save the community and the economy.

"So the 1997-1998 time he attended was by bailing out of the collapsing financial sector. 2008-2009 countries were present to stabilize the global atmosphere, which at that time was a tremendous shock. Then we just passed the pandemic crisis," he said.

The state treasurer revealed that in the global situation of financial crisis 2009-2010, the government learned by perfecting regulations in the banking sector, capital market, and non-bank financial institutions such as insurance and pension funds.

He added, in dealing with the pandemic crisis, Indonesia used fiscal instruments followed by monetary instruments and then took various non-conventional steps including widening the deficit.

The Minister of Finance also said that Indonesia was one of the few countries that experienced three crises and learning, even recovered and handled the crisis well.

"Learning from the shock-shocks that occurred on the long and winding road Indonesia journey, we can have good optimism, which is high. Because Indonesia is a few countries that want and can learn from various shocks", he concluded.