Economy Slows Down, Poverty Rate Increases

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Institute For Development Of Economics and Finance (Indef) predicts that the number of poor in Indonesia is increasing. According to Indef, the number increased from 10.96 percent in September 2014 to 11.5 percent in March 2015.

Based on Indef’s calculation, assuming that there are 300 million people in Indonesia, there are more than 30 million people who live in poverty.

According to Indef’s economist Fadhil Hasan, the Unemployment Index also increased from 7.15 percent in 2014 to 7.5 percent in 2015’s first semester.

Fahdil said the calculation is based on several ongoing economic development indications. One of them is economic growth in 2015 that decreased to 4.7 percent.

Additionally, high inflation rate also hits people’s purchasing power “Inflation of 8.8 percent from food groups deeply affect the people,” he said.

Fadhil added that poverty rate is also sustained by the drop in government’s direct aid to the people. The rice in food prices are followed by reduction in rice for the poor and cash aid from the government.

“The ratio also increased from 0.41 percent to 0.42 percent,” said Fadhil.

Fadhil believes that Indef’s prediction will not be much different from the Social Economic Survey (susenas) that will be released by the Central Statistics Agency. “BPS hasn’t released susenas. It should’ve been released already,” said Fadhil.

ANDI RUSLI