BPS: Poverty Rate Drops to 9.22 Percent as of September 2019
Translator
Ricky Mohammad Nugraha
Editor
Petir Garda Bhwana
Rabu, 15 Januari 2020 13:37 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta- The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) announced that Indonesia’s poverty rate up to September 2019 reached 9.22 percent. This is a 0.19 percentage point reduction from March of the same year and slightly dropped 0.44 percent point compared to September 2018.
The temporary number of people living in poverty up to September 2019 amount to 24.79 million, which is 0.36 million reductions compared to March 2019 and 0.88 million reduction compared to September 2018.
BPS uses the basic needs approach in calculating the poverty level as this approach views poverty from a person’s economic perspective in fulfilling basic needs such as food.
“This method has been used by the BPS since 1998 to reach a consistent and comparable calculation which is apple to apple,” said BPS Head, Suhariyanto in today’s press conference.
Despite dropping the level of poverty, the issue of high disparity between urban areas and rural areas remain. Poverty in urban areas up to September 2019 was 6.56 percent while in rural areas reached 12.60 percent.
