Statistics Indonesia (BPS) reported on Monday that the disparity of poverty levels between urban and rural areas remained very high as the national poverty rate decreased to 9.41 percent as of March. BPS head Suhariyanto said BPS recorded Indonesia’s poverty rate at 9.41 percent as of March, down by a 0.25 percentage point from 9.66 as of last September or down by a 0.41 percentage point from 9.82 percent as of March 2018. “However, it’s important to note that the poverty disparity between urban and rural areas remained very high with the rate in rural areas almost two times of the rate in urban areas,” he said in a press conference. As of March, the poverty rate was recorded at 6.69 percent in urban areas and at 12.85 percent in rural areas. The poverty disparity among provinces in the country also remained very high, Suhariyanto said. Jakarta, for example, recorded the lowest rate, 3.47 percent, and Papua the highest, 27.53 percent, far above the national average of 9.41 percent, he said. Suhariyanto said that currently the number of poor people in Indonesia was 25.41 million, a decrease of 800,000 from March last year. He said the decrease in the poverty rate was thanks to overall increases in farmers’ wages, to the low inflation rate of 1.52 percent from September 2018 to March 2019 and to the decrease in prices of staple foods like poultry, vegetable oil, sugar and chilies. He also said the increase in the government’s social assistance was… [Read full story]
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