It did not include the cost of the national vaccination program.
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Indonesian government still needs to pay Rp23 trillion for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in 2021, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has informed.

"We still have a Rp23-trillion bill to be paid in 2022," she said at the Microfinance Outlook event organized by state-owned PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) here on Thursday.

The bill resulted from a surge in cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19, wherein many people were infected and required hospitalization, she explained.

The surge in cases led to the health sector dominating state spending due to the cost of treating COVID-19 patients, which reached around Rp94 trillion, the minister noted.


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This shows that the cost of handling COVID-19 is very high as the figure does not include the spending on other sectors, such as social protection, she highlighted.

“Furthermore, the spending was only for patient treatment. It did not include the cost of the national vaccination program," she said.

Meanwhile, the realization of state spending in 2021 reached Rp2,786.8 trillion, or 101.3 percent of the 2021 State Budget (APBN) target of Rp2,750 trillion, the minister informed.

However, Indrawati assured that the government will improve the APBN balance. She noted that the APBN deficit in 2021 had declined significantly.


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In 2021, the deficit was Rp783.7 trillion, or 4.65 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), she said. It was lower than the deficit limit of Rp1.006 trillion, or 5.7 percent of the GDP, she added.

It was also smaller than the deficit in 2020, which reached Rp947 trillion or 6.14 percent of the GDP, she pointed out.

The decline in the deficit was due to the achievement of state revenues, which reached Rp2,003 trillion, or 114.9 percent of the APBN target as of December 31, 2021, Indrawati said.

"It showed that although the spending of the state budget was extremely high, we managed to maintain it well,” the minister added.


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Translator: Astrid Habibah, Uyu Liman
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
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