Wealth of 40 richest equals 60 million poorest: NGO

The gap in income between the rich and the poor in Indonesia is ever widening as new data shows that the wealth of the country’s 40 richest people is equivalent to the accumulated wealth of 60 million of the poorest citizens.

The data from NGO Perkumpulan Prakarsa showed that the country’s economy was increasingly concentrated and among the super-rich minority.

“In 2010, the wealth of the 40 richest men in Indonesia was Rp 680 trillion [US$76.84 billion], or equivalent to 10.3 percent of the country’s GDP. The total wealth of those 40 is the same as the wealth of 60 million of the country’s poorest people,” Perkumpulan Prakarsa executive director Setyo Budiantoro said on Tuesday as quoted by tribunnews.com.

He said that the current situation was worse than the income discrepancy experienced in Soeharto’s New Order regime.

Setyo added that the problem of the widening economic gap has not been realized by the public because it has been successfully hidden by the government and conservative international financial organizations.