“Consumers and small and medium businesses will need backups to support their economic wellbeing following social mobility limitation during the emergency restrictions,” secretary to the Coordinating Economic Ministry Susiwijono Moegiarso told a virtual dialogue held by KPC PEN on July 15.

He said the government had optimized fund absorption of the National Economic Recovery programs and initiated some new programs.

The total support from the state budget of Rp 699.43 trillion for the National Economic Recovery programs has been rearranged as follows:

• Increasing the social protection program budget from Rp 148.27 trillion to Rp 153.86 trillion.
• The health budget has been increased from Rp 172.84 trillion to Rp 193.93 trillion
• The supporting funds for micro, small and medium enterprises and corporations have been reduced from Rp 193.74 trillion to Rp 171.77 trillion.
• Business incentives have been increased from Rp 56.73 trillion to Rp 62.83 trillion
• Priority program funds have been reduced from the previous Rp 127.85 trillion to Rp 117.04 trillion.

Susiwijono said the government had also fortified the social protection programs by extending them, increasing their amount and accelerating the fund disbursement. The government, he went on, intended to extend cash aid programs, encourage fund absorption in many social protection programs and distribute staple food cards. These strategies, he added, were solely aimed at strengthening people’s economic conditions.

“Consumer spending contributes 60 percent to our GDP,” he said.

Besides people in cities, those in rural areas, especially those in tourism-based villages have been massively hit by the pandemic, which has also led to steeply declining revenues.

Responding to this phenomenon, Deputy Villages, Disadvantages Regions and Transmigration Minister Budi Arie Setiadi said the ministry had arranged a priority scale for village fund management. The social safety net through village fund-originated cash aid, which was launched on July 14, for example, has channeled a total of Rp 5.8 trillion, with more than 5.1 million family recipients.

Along with other state institutions, the state electricity company PLN has also initiated an electricity discount program for its customers. PLN’s commercial and customer management director Bob Saril said the discounts were not only for the two categories of subsidized customers, namely the 450 VA and 900 VA categories, but also for business and industrial scale customers. The discount program will be extended until September this year.

Up to June 2021, PLN had disbursed a total stimulus of Rp 6.6 trillion, which could be used by 33 million PLN customers. “Another Rp 2.51 trillion will be poured in to extend the discounted electricity program,” he said.

Regarding the government’s plan to extend the emergency restrictions to four to six weeks ahead, Susiwijono said the current emergency restrictions were still being evaluated by the Coordinating Economic Ministry and the National Economic and COVID-19 Recovery Committee. The evaluation result would determine whether the restrictions would be extended or not.

He gave an assurance that the government would be all out in balancing the health and economic recovery efforts.

“We will prioritize health recovery efforts. Once the virus infection numbers get lower then we can boost our economy,” he said.

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