Head of the Fiscal Policy Board at the finance ministry,Febrio Kacaribu emphasized that the state budget will be used to protect publichealth amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Febrio, the health sector's 2021 budgetincludes 25.870 trillion rupiah for hospital treatment and home isolation forCOVID-19 patients, and 2.750 trillion rupiah for construction of temporary hospitals. The government will also allocate 57.840 trillion rupiah for thevaccination programme and 1.08 trillion rupiah to support health workers.
The official said the Indonesian Government will increasethe budget by another 400 billion rupiah to purchase pharmaceuticals forCOVID-19 treatment, 70 billion rupiah for emergency oxygen and 790 billion rupiahfor small-scale PPKM implementation. Meanwhile, the budget for implementing the3T (tracing, treatment and testing) strategy and paying for the COVID-19prevention and research task force amounted to 45.930 trillion rupiah.
The Government of Indonesia also sharply increased thesocial protection budget under the PEN framework from 153.86 trillion rupiah to187.84 trillion rupiah in the context of the extension and expansion of theemergency PPKM.
It is expected that the financial aid will bedisbursed in the period from July to September./.