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Increase in rice prices exacerbates poverty
The surge in rice prices causes many social and economic impacts, not least for people living in poverty, so targeted policies that take a holistic approach are needed to prevent future fallout on public health and education.
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People’s burden: A worker carries government rice aid at the warehouse of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) in Talumolo area, Gorontalo city, Gorontalo on March 3, 2024. (Antara/Adiwinata Solihin)
D
iscussing poverty seems to be an endless endeavor. This is because poverty remains a persistent issue in many countries, including Indonesia.
According to data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS), Indonesia’s poverty rate was still 9.36 percent as of March 2023.
This figure is still high compared to the government’s poverty rate as set in the National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) 2020-2024, which targets a range of 6.5-7.5 percent.
This means that if the government aims to achieve the 7.5 percent target by 2024, it must reduce the percentage of the poor population by 1.86 percentage points from the 2023 conditions. This, of course, is an uphill task.
BPS data show that over the past decade, annual poverty reduction has never reached 1 percentage point. In March 2018, when the poverty rate first reached a single-digit figure of 9.82 percent, the figure had decreased only by 0.82 percentage point from 10.64 percent in March 2017.
Even when observing the overall reduction over a decade, the population of poor people has decreased only by 2.01 percentage points, from 11.37 percent in March 2013 to 9.36 percent in March 2023.
Similarly, other crucial poverty indices exhibit worrisome trends, including the poverty depth index (P1) and the poverty severity index (P2).
