The government is planning to reallocate some of this year’s remaining stimulus funds to pay for mass vaccination in 2021.
By Dec. 14, the government had spent 70 percent – or Rp 481.6 trillion (US$34.12 billion) – of the nation’s Rp 695.2 trillion stimulus package in an effort to strengthen the healthcare system and tend to the economy as it reeled from the coronavirus outbreak.
“We think that it may not be possible to spend 100 percent of the budget this year,” Budi Gunadi Sadikin, the head of the economic recovery task force, told reporters during a virtual press conference on Wednesday. “We have already had discussions that the remaining funds will be used for the national vaccination program.”
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced on Wednesday that the government would provide free vaccines to all Indonesians in 2021 and asked Cabinet members to prioritize the vaccination effort next year.
“I have instructed the finance minister to prioritize and reallocate the state budget to make [vaccines] available for free so that there will be no reason that people cannot get a vaccine,” the President said during a streamed briefing, noting that he had volunteered to be the first person to receive the shot to build confidence in the inoculation.
The government is hoping to secure 246.6 million vaccine doses. It has been in negotiations with Pfizer, AstraZeneca and global vaccine program COVAX, in addition to China’s Sinovac Biotech.
It has ordered about 143 million doses from Sinovac in various forms, from ready-to-administer doses to vaccine bulk, out of which individual doses of the vaccine are drawn. However, the Sinovac vaccine’s efficacy remains unknown, pending further results.
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