According to Sri Mulyani, this is the reason why the president calls for the end of the year holidays to be reduced

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com – President Joko Widodo has called for the end of the year holidays and the replacement Eid leave in December to be reduced.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati also revealed the reasons for President Jokowi’s request.

He said that if the holidays were too long, it could trigger a spike in Covid-19 cases so that economic activity that started to rise could weaken again.

He explained that under normal conditions, vacations tend to encourage community activities to interact with each other so that consumption occurs. Meanwhile, long vacations during the pandemic may increase Covid-19 cases but do not improve the economy.

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“This means that we must be careful to look at it. Whether with a long holiday, people perform high mobility activities but it does not generate expense and cause additional cases of Covid. That must be maintained,” explained Sri Mulyani giving an explanation during the conference of the KiTa National Budget, Monday (11/23/2020).

Sri Mulyani explained that in the first month of the fourth quarter, ie October, the number of working days was shorter than last year.

In October of this year the number of working days was only 19 days, while last year it was 23 days.

In fact, the long holidays on the weekend of October caused export and import activity in the port to be slightly interrupted due to the holidays. Economic activity has also decreased, as can be seen in the drop in electricity consumption in the business sector.

And it illustrates that the impact on the economy in the productive sector is also decreasing, in non-consumption collect too, “he explained.

Meanwhile, the number of business days in November is 21 days both this year and last year. Meanwhile, for December 2020, the number of business days leaves only 16 days if there is a year-end holiday that is long enough as previously planned.

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“We don’t just see one side, but everything. Economic health aspects of business activities and others. This is what the president was referring to with whether the number of working days or long vacations in a Covid environment had an impact. involuntary that is, the number of cases increases but economic activity does not increase, ”he said.

On the other hand, Sri Mulyani assessed that middle class consumption is still difficult to encourage. This is because the consumption of the middle class is closely related to their belief in the government’s handling of the pandemic.

“Ideally, there is a vaccine, so that we can really make the community own it trust. All countries are facing this because they are facing the same situation in which people want to carry out activities but it really depends on whether Covid can be controlled ”, he concluded.

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