Remarks of President of the Republic of Indonesia During Limited Meeting on COVID-19 Handling and Vaccination Planning, Wednesday, 6 January 2020 at the State Palace, Jakarta

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh,

Good afternoon,

May peace be upon us all,

Om Swastiastu,

Namo Buddhaya,

Greetings of virtue.

Distinguished Vice President,

Distinguished Coordinating Ministers, Ministers in attendance;,

Distinguished Governors from all across the country who join this occasion virtually.

First of all, I would like to wish you a Happy New Year. On this occasion, I would like to address several important points regarding our agendas in 2021.

First, our strategy in dealing with this pandemic remains the same. It includes health care issue, social protection program issue, and economic recovery program. The key to the economic recovery is how we work hard to stop and control the COVID-19 pandemic.

As we are aware, two or three days ago Bangkok was under a partial lockdown, Tokyo has declared a state of emergency, London has also been under lockdown, the United Kingdom has imposed a national lockdown due to the exponential spread of COVID-19. Therefore, we must work hard so that the 3T program (testing, tracing, and treatment), as well as the 3M health protocols (wearing a face mask, maintaining physical distancing, and washing hands) can be implemented on the ground. Based on the survey we are currently conducting, public disciplinary motivation in following health protocols has dropped.

Wearing a mask, washing hands, and  maintaining physical distancing are rarely implemented. For that reason, I urge governors to re-intensify health protocol-related issues since the survey shows the drop in public discipline implementing health protocols.

I’d like to inform all of you that vaccination will start next week. The distribution of vaccines to the regions has also been carried out on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. That was the first distribution and our target is that for January, 5.8 million doses of vaccines will arrive in the regions. In February, 10.45 million doses of vaccines will be distributed again to the regions. Then in March, 13.3 million doses of vaccines will be distributed and the vaccination program can start in the regions. I will inform vaccine distribution for the following months on the next occasion.

I also need to highlight the number of vaccine doses that we have ordered. The amount of vaccine we have ordered reaches 3 million,  plus 122.5 million more doses of Sinovacs, 50 million doses from Novavax, 54 million doses from COVAX/Gavi, 50 million doses from AstraZeneca, and 50 million doses from Pfizer. That means, the total number of firm order is 329.5 million doses. The distribution will be carried out by Minister of Health. To that end, I urge the governors to check and control the preparations for the vaccination.

Second, regarding economic recovery. The key is in the investment. The State Budget will not be able to cover all of the development programs. Therefore, once again, I have said this many times that neither ministries nor regional governments will hinder the investment. We hope ministries, institutions, regional governments to provide swift and good services for investment. For bigger investments, I order the governors to handle such investments so that it can be realized on the ground.

I also need to state that since there is a high need for development financing, the ratio of government debt to the GDP also continues to increase, the financing capacity of SOEs is also limited and it has caused a gap between funding capacity and financing needs for national development.

Therefore, the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) was established in this month for the governors to know. Thus, we have a breakthrough in terms of our national financing, not only depending on the State Budget, not only depending on loan assistance, but we will also have one more instrument, namely the Sovereign Wealth Fund, which will be called the Indonesia Investment Authority. In order to get ourselves familiar with the new instrument on the ground, I order the governors to assist the implementation when it comes to regions.

Then, related to the existing developments in the regions. For 2021, regarding food estate developments, in terms of our food security, I urge the governors whose provinces have a food estate development in their regions to provide full support for the acceleration of licensing so that we will have several regencies and provinces that have food estates. And, we hope that in 2021 we can finish the developments well.

That concludes my remarks.

I thank you. (SA/MEP)