Sri Mulyani Predicts 2021 Health Budget Hike to More than Rp300tn
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4 August 2021 22:06 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati predicted that the health budget for Covid-19 response this year will increase to more than Rp300 trillion.
"For health, it increased from Rp176 trillion—for handling Covid—to Rp214.9 trillion. The total health budget this year is projected to exceed Rp300 trillion," Sri said in a CSIS web seminar on Wednesday, August 4.
The budget hike is huge, because "most of the budget for the National Economic Recovery program is allocated for health," she said.
Initially, said Sri Mulyani, the health sector was allocated a budget of Rp176 trillion this year. The value was later raised to Rp214.9 trillion, in line with the implementation of community activities restrictions policy, known as PPKM.
In addition, the expenditure budget for social assistance was also raised to Rp187 trillion in 2021, because the people is under tremendous economic pressure during the restrictions.
Overall, Sri Mulyani said, the economic recovery and Covid-19 response budget this year has increased to Rp744.75 trillion from the previous budget of Rp699.43 trillion. The additional budget was mainly used to deal with increasingly widespread delta variant.
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Muhammad Hendartyo
