COVID-19 and the Economy: How Indonesia Responded

As in all other countries in the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered many aspects of life in Indonesia. The pandemic has caught everybody by surprise, unprepared to adapt to and mitigate the new crisis. This chapter attempts to show how Indonesia responded to the economic issues during the pandemic: how the government responded to relieve the economic suffering of the people, how individuals coped with the crisis, how business behaved to survive (including the use of e-commerce), and how resilient the macro-economy was. It is based on many scattered surveys, mostly conducted by Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS-Statistics Indonesia), on COVID-19. The data are mostly until end of December 2020. The discussion is preceded with the trend of the pandemic and change in population mobility. The chapter concludes that 6 months after the start of the pandemic, people’s mobility resumed closer to levels before the pandemic, and the economy was already improving, even as the number of daily infected cases kept rising. Some people and some businesses enjoyed economic opportunities during the pandemic, particularly those who could use online activities and practise tight health protocols.