JAKARTA, July 21 — The Indonesian government has decided to raise budget spending on health care and social protection to over 214.9 trillion rupiah from the previous 93.93 trillion rupiah (RM27.3 billion) within the framework of the national economic recovery (PEN).

Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported that head of the fiscal policy board at the finance ministry, Febrio Kacaribu emphasised that the state budget will be used to protect public health amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Febrio, the health sector’s 2021 budget includes 25.870 trillion rupiah for hospital treatment and home isolation for Covid-19 patients, and 2.750 trillion rupiah for construction of temporary hospitals. The government will also allocate 57.840 trillion rupiah for the vaccination programme and 1.08 trillion rupiah to support health workers.

The official said the Indonesian government will increase the budget by another 400 billion rupiah to purchase pharmaceuticals for covid-19 treatment, 70 billion rupiah for emergency oxygen and 790 billion rupiah for small-scale ppkm implementation. Meanwhile, the budget for implementing the 3T (tracing, treatment and testing) strategy and paying for the Covid-19 prevention and research task force amounted to 45.930 trillion rupiah, VNA added.

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The government of Indonesia also sharply increased the social protection budget under the PEN framework from 153.86 trillion rupiah to 187.84 trillion rupiah in the context of the extension and expansion of the emergency PPKM.

It is expected that the financial aid will be disbursed in the period from July to September. — Bernama