One Percent of the Rich Controls Half of National Wealth: Report

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Alleviation (TNP2K) recently reported that one percent of the country's wealthiest are in control of nearly half of national assets based on their survey. 

In their report presented at the Vice Presidential Palace on Wednesday, the TNP2K maintained that this significant gap remains as the government’s homework despite managing to reduce poverty since 2015.

The team’s executive secretary, Bambang Widianto, said that poverty continues to decline from 11.2 percent in March of 2015, to 9.41 percent in March 2019. 

“For the first time, poverty dropped to a single-digit considering that reducing poverty gets more difficult the smaller the digits are,” said Bambang.

However, Bambang explained that there is a concentration of national assets centering on a small portion of Indonesia’s wealthiest people. This follows the fact that Indonesia is ranked fourth with the world’s wealth inequality just behind Russia, India, and Thailand. 

“One percent of Indonesians are in control of 50 percent national assets. If you increase that to 10 percent of families, that will be in control of 70 percent. This means that 90 percent of the population is fighting for the remaining 30 percent,” said Bambang.

Bambang believes the government could overcome the issue by fixing a number of issues such as schools, sanitation, healthcare, electricity, and lastly the availability of jobs through infrastructure development. 

EGI ADYATAMA