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Poverty rate falls to prepandemic level
Indonesia's poverty rate fell to 9.71 percent in September 2021, a level last seen in March 2020 when the country reported its first COVID-19 cases.
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Poverty trap: Women from Golomedi village in East Manggarai regency, East Nusa Tenggara, carry firewood on their way back home on April 30, 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased poverty rates, but the health crisis has hit rural areas harder than urban areas. (JP/Markus Makur)
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tatistics Indonesia (BPS) reported Monday that the country's poverty rate had reached 9.71 percent or equal to 26.50 million people in September 2021, continuing a downward trend since March 2021.
The figure marks the lowest poverty rate since the country confirmed its first COVID-19 cases in March 2020, when it stood at 9.78 percent. However, the latest figure remains higher by 0.49 percentage points than the September 2019 level.
Indonesia’s poverty rate continued to fall as the government raised social protection and the country continued to loosen COVID-19 pandemic curbs.
“This means the efforts to revive the economy have had an impact on poverty, given the downward trend," BPS head Margo Yuwono said in a press briefing of the biannual poverty rate data.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused the poverty rate to rise to 10.19 percent in September 2020, a level last seen in 2017, undoing three years worth of progress in poverty alleviation.
Read also: Poverty rate hits three-year high
When the Delta wave hit the country in July 2021, the government raised its stimulus budget by nearly 6.5 percent to Rp 744.77 trillion (US$52.01 billion) from the initial budget, Finance Ministry data shows. As a result, the government also increased its social protection budget by 25.7 percent to Rp 186.4 trillion.
