REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Indonesian government has agreed to allocate Rp15 trillion in budget fund for disaster anticipation and mitigation in the 2019 state budget. Last year, the government spent more than Rp7 trillion on disaster mitigation.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati explained the budget fund did not merely go to the BNPB (National Disaster Mitigation Board). "We increased the expenditure in the form of on-call fund," she stated after a plenary cabinet meeting themed "Programs and Activities in 2019" at the State Palace here on Monday.

She noted that the on-call fund will be made available if the BNPB deems it necessary to take emergency action. The government also plans to form pooling fund, through which it pools fund from each region for disaster mitigation efforts, she explained.

To carry out disaster mitigation programs, the government has also learned from the Philippines, which is frequently affected by typhoons, and Latin American countries, which are often struck by earthquakes, she revealed. The pooling fund scheme will be prepared to deal with losses due to natural disasters, she added.

The government begins to prepare disaster insurance mechanism by setting aside Rp1 trillion worth of pooling fund to speed up the recovery of the affected areas. The fund can be disbursed by taking into account the extent of natural disasters, including the number of victims and the amount of material losses.

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