According to a report by the Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu), the realization of the budget for Handling Covid-19 and National Economic Recovery (PC-PEN) reached Rp146.7 trillion until July 22, 2022.
This amount is only 32.2% of the allocated budget for this year, which is Rp455.6 trillion.
"(The realization) is lower than the average expenditure of ministries, institutions, or other state spending, which has reached more than 40% of the budget ceiling," said Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati at the APBN Kita press conference in Jakarta on Wednesday (27/7/2022).
In detail, the realization in the health handling cluster is only Rp31.8 trillion or 25.9% of the allocated budget of Rp122.54 trillion.
The budget in this cluster is used for the payment of claims and incentives for health workers, tax incentives for vaccines/medical equipment, and handling Covid-19 through Village Funds.
Then, the realization in the community protection cluster has reached Rp63.7 trillion from an allocation of Rp154.76 trillion. Programs in this cluster consist of PKH (Family Hope Program), Sembako Cards (Basic Food Cards), Kartu Prakerja (Pre-employment Card), Village BLT (Cash Assistance), Cooking Oil BLT (Cash Assistance), and BT-PKLWN (Cash Assistance for Informal Workers).
"It can be seen that what is still growing quite high or whose implementation is quite fast is for social protection, which has reached Rp63.7 trillion or 41%. This is similar to the spending of ministries, institutions, and other state spending," said Sri Mulyani.
Meanwhile, the realization in the economic recovery strengthening cluster is only Rp51.3 trillion, or 28.7% of the ceiling of Rp178.32 trillion.
The realization in this cluster is mainly for labor-intensive programs, tourism and creative economy, food security, information and communication technology, industrial areas, UMKM support (interest subsidies and IJP), and tax incentives.
Sri Mulyani hopes that the disbursement of this economic recovery budget can be accelerated more optimally so that it can drive the national economy even better.