Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati believes multilateral cooperation has an important role in the process of economic recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic because this crisis is a global problem.
"Currently there is a pandemic, once again showing that we cannot work alone," said Sri Mulyani when she was a panelist at the B20 Saudi Arabia Summit in a virtual location in Jakarta, Monday.
According to her, to enter the vaccination era requires stronger cooperation between countries or multilateral cooperation.
She is optimistic that multilateral cooperation in handling global problems such as the COVID-19 pandemic will make it more efficient, better, and transparent.
The former Managing Director of the World Bank added that when a country wants to ensure that its country is safe with vaccinations, that country cannot just shut down, but must continue to work together because of human mobility.
For that, she continued, communication and cooperation between countries is still needed, one of which is to ensure access to vaccines for all countries.
Not only a pandemic problem, the issue of climate change to the disruption of digital technology, especially trade, is also a global problem that requires multilateral cooperation.
"So like it or not, with multilateral cooperation, dealing with this problem must be through global cooperation, because it is impossible to solve it alone," she said.
Sri Mulyani became one of the panelists at the B20 Saudi Arabia Summit entitled Redesigning Multilateralism for a new era.
Also attending the virtual opportunity were the Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgiva, Secretary-General of the United Nations Trade and Development Agency (UNCTAD) Mukhisa Kituyi, and Former Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Roberto Azevedo.