World Oil Prices Soar, Minister Of Finance Sri Mulyani Was-was

Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani. (Photo: Maria Trisnawati/VOI)

BALI - Finance Minister Sri Mulyani opened her voice about the increasing world oil prices.

On Friday, September 15, Brent' oil price jumped to 94 US dollars per barrel and became the highest throughout 2023.

With this increasing trend, Sri Mulyani admitted that she would continue to coordinate with the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) Erick Thohir and the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) Arifin Tasrif to maintain resilience and security and energy subsidies amid rising oil prices.

"So we will continue to calculate together with the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources and Mr. Erick from SOEs, how can we maintain price stability, production goes up from the upstream side, and also in terms of downstream we will target subsidies more to be on target. That is one of the homeworks we have to do, explained Sri Mulyani when met by media crews at The International Convention on Indonesian Upstream Oil and Gas (ICIOG) 2023 at Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center, Wednesday, September 20.

He explained that the issue of the trend of increasing prices had also been discussed with the DPR RI and the Ministry of Finance would continue to monitor this.

The state treasurer said the trend of this increase was driven by joint OPEC+ Saudi and Russia which specifically controlled and reduced the number of productions, while world oil demand was still quite high.

"So, we see this will be one of the trends that we must monitor continuously. Because of its influence on the state budget as I said, both from tax revenues and from PNBP. On the other hand, energy needs in Indonesia with recovery and economic growth above 5 percent will definitely continue to increase," concluded Sri Mulyani.