The latest report on poverty levels released by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) received mixed responses Wednesday, with some groups claiming it benefited the incumbent President and his chances of re-election.
With the rate of inflation fairly low and stable, the number of people living in poverty had dropped by 2.43 million to 32.53 million by March this year compared to the previous year.
Arizal Ahnaf, BPS deputy chairman for social statistics, said the decrease in poverty occurred mostly in rural areas. Data shows that around 1.57 million people increased their standard of living in rural areas across Indonesia.
BPS defines someone as living in poverty if they earn less than Rp 200,000 per month, an even lower standard than the international poverty line set by the World Bank (WB) at US$2 per day. Under the WB standard, 60 percent of the Indonesian population could be defined as living in poverty.
Hasto Kristianto, a member of Megawati Sukarnoputri's presidential campaign team, questioned the validity of the BPS data.
"We have to confirm the BPS' standards on poverty. I don't think we can use the current standard to classify the poor. With those levels of income, one should no longer be classified as just *poor', but *extremely poor'," he said.
The government should not use the BPS as an institution to fool people, Hasto said.
When asked whether government intervention played any part in the announcement of this data, an economist from the University of Indonesia, Faisal Basri, said the government was using an ethical strategy and was not favoring the incumbent President.
"The BPS data is based on figures up until March, which is the same every year. If this year the data was extended to include June and July figures for some unknown reason, then we should all have been suspicious."
Faisal said the data probably reflected reality as the price of certain key goods had stabilized in recent times.
Under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration, poverty rates peaked in March 2006 to 39.3 million, or 17.7 percent of the total population, after the government introduced a fuel price hike of more than 100 percent. This in turn led to a spike in the price of other essential commodities.
Consumer prices, however, further eased by March this year, slowing to 7.9 percent on a year-by-year basis.
Maxensius Tri Sambodo from the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI) said he was surprised to learn about the decrease in poverty, especially considering the various repercussions being felt even now from the global economic downturn last year. He said several industrial areas such as Batam had seen negative growth in the past couple of months.
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