During the '100 Economist Virtual Workshop', accessed from here on Thursday, Nazara said that the government had unveiled Government Regulation in Lieu of Law (Perppu) No.1 of 2020 to fulfill the three fiscal policy characteristics.
The regulation allowed the government to carry out budget refocusing through spending budget creation and state spending change (APBN-P) amid COVID-19, he added.
Since 2020, the state budget has been used to handle COVID-19 and this has acted as a cushion so that the economy does not experience a sharp drop due to COVID-19 pandemic handling, he said.
"Because of it, we drastically changed the state budget twice last year. This year, once we enter the recovery period, we are optimistic, but when we are seeing signs of Delta variant abroad, we predict when will it enter Indonesia, and we will adjust accordingly," he elaborated.
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This year, the government has conducted budget refocusing four times, Nazara noted. For the second refocusing, the government paid Eid al-Fitr holiday allowances (THR) to state apparatus (ASN) without the performance allowance, he informed.
"We saved a couple of trillions out of that," Nazara said.
Amid the spread of the Delta variant, the government has decided to boost national economic recovery spending up to Rp744 trillion, the funds for which have come from constant refocusing, he added.
"Once fiscal becomes responsive, flexible, and accommodating, then it may be slightly different from the fiscal policy perspective that we know of," Nazara highlighted.
He also lauded the efforts made by the House of Representatives (DPR) to support the Finance Ministry's implementation of the adaptive, anticipative, and flexible fiscal policy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Translator: Sanya Susanti, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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