Indonesia's spending on fighting its ongoing Covid-19 outbreak, one of the world's worst, could exceed 300 trillion rupiah ($20.97 billion) this year, the country’s finance ministry has said.

Indonesia had earmarked 214.95tr rupiah to fight the virus in recently revised spending plans, but the devastating impact of the Delta variant of the coronavirus could increase that figure by as much as 40 per cent to 300tr rupiah, according to Reuters.

Indonesia has been grappling with a surge of Covid-19 cases since June, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, and officials have imposed strict movement curbs since July.

While overall case numbers have been on the decline, the health ministry has still reported on average more than 36,000 Covid-19 cases and 1,500 deaths a day over the last week.