TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati revealed that the Indonesian government experiences losses up to an estimated Rp22 trillion annually caused by natural disasters. It was further driven by the fact that Indonesia sits on the geographically active ring of fire.

“Rp22 trillion asset values were lost because of natural disasters. That’s not a small amount of money,” said the minister during her presentation at the Dhanapala building on Monday, Dec. 17.

Sri Mulyani maintains that Indonesia needs experts in environmental issues, engineers, and spatial expert to reestablish Indonesia’s property developments as it is the best anticipative measure to counter the disasters that unexpectedly strike the country, especially assets that are either lost or damaged by it.

This asset management highlighted by Sri Mulyani is still not managed well and the minister argues that it’s driven by the lack of maintaining and creating added values for such assets. She feels that her office should involve the private industry in managing the assets.

“This is one of the ways to repair the legal certainty that could make the property sector grow healthy and creates value for the public,” Sri said.

Sri Mulyani said that the number of victims and damage levels can be managed well by studying the region with potential disaster zones. Through this way, the government will be able to exactly determine the amount of disaster aid a region must be given.

AHMAD FAIZ