The Government of Indonesia plans to implement several policies to anticipate the spread of Coronavirus in which the World Health Organization (WHO) has considered it as a global emergency.
This policy plan, along with several steps that have been taken by the government, is considered appropriate. It also shows the firm and brave attitude of the Indonesian government.
"Government’s evacuating plan is considered as a precisely right action because the state must protect its citizens both domestically and abroad," said the Institute of International Studies (IIS) FISIPOL UGM researcher, Arindha Nityasari, Wednesday (5) / 2).
This policy, according to him, has a strong legal foundation. This step is also considered quite bold because the evacuation process has its risks, it is the exposure of the fleet used to bring Indonesian citizens from China, as well as the possibility of citizens bringing the Coronavirus into Indonesia.
"Some people may not show symptoms of the disease, but they may carry the virus when they return to Indonesia," he said.
He continued, with 7 out of 10 ASEAN countries which close enough to Indonesia confirmed the Corona case. Indonesia inevitably has to do something to prevent the entry of the virus into Indonesia. The decision to temporarily suspend flights to China was also considered as quite strategic because it was made after Indonesia succeeded in evacuating residents who were in Wuhan.
"If it was done before there would be retaliation, China might not allow us to evacuate our citizens there," Arindha said.
Decisive steps were taken by the Indonesian government had certain impacts, ranging from increasing anti-Chinese sentiment to the sluggishness of the tourism sector because China is one of the biggest tourist contributing countries in Indonesia.
However, according to him, there is no need to worry, because this sluggishness only occurs for a while. Besides, this impact is not only undergone by Indonesia but also globally.
Another IIS researcher, Indrawan Jatmika, said that the Coronavirus caused a considerable economic impact for China itself. Economic growth is told to have decreased from 11.1 per cent to 8.1 per cent. Also, Chinese stock prices declined by 8 per cent with a total market value of 445 billion dollars.
“Wuhan is a central industrialized place in China, so there are so many temporary non-operational factory and laid-off workers because of this case, this also affects to stock value. “ he said.
This case is also predicted to have certain impacts on the global economy considering China’s role as one of the world economic power which has high interdependencies with other countries. However, this impact itself cannot be predicted with certainty, given the current situation which is still in its initial phase.
Indrawan said that the influence of its economy forward depends on how China can deal with this virus and the ability to restore economic conditions after the case is over.
“This case is bigger than SARS happened in 2002-2003, we can predict the possibility of the bigger impact as well. However, interdependencies between countries in the world are going to restore the global economy as before,” he said.
Translator: Sasa