Badung, The Indonesia Post – Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani said Indonesia was lucky because the prices of the mainstay export commodities increased globally, which raised state revenues drastically.
“But our budget bears the burden of a very large subsidy for fuel,” said Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani in the 2022 G20 Indonesia Side Activity entitled “Sustainable Finance for Climate Transition Roundtable” in Nusa Dua, Badung, Bali.
For other countries that do not have the ability to subsidize, she continued, the risk is borne by the community. Thus, it is not surprising that inflation in many countries shot up and drove them to the brink of recession.
Therefore, Sri Mulyani sees challenges in dealing with inflation as one of the most important agendas to be discussed at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting on 15-16 July 2022 in Jakarta.
The meeting of the Ministers of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank is the third time before the G20 summit in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia.
In the midst of efforts to recover the economy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is currently faced with the geopolitical problem of the Russia-Ukraine conflict as well as soaring inflation in several countries.
According to Sri Mulyani, Russia is the second largest supplier of crude oil in the world, so when a war breaks out, world oil prices jump many times and cause energy crises everywhere.
Likewise, Ukraine’s role is no less important in world trade because it is one of the largest suppliers of wheat in the world.
“So the most visible impact on the energy and food crisis,” said Sri Mulyani.
The war, she said, also resulted in an increase in international commodity prices, such as coal, bauxite, nickel and palm oil. (ojn/bbs)
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