The Evolving of Poverty in Indonesia on 2004-2011

SBY’s government has been fighting poverty problem for approximately  8 years. After elected as president, SBY advocated poverty alleviation effort and designed measures to combat that problem. With his cabinets and vice president, SBY prioritize to minimize the number of poor people or poverty rate whilst he governs Indonesia. 

In the table below, we can look the evolving of poverty in Indonesia during 2004-2011. As we know, SBY first elected in 2004, then also elected in 2009. In Feb 2004, the number of poor people is 36,1 million or 16,6 percent. A year later, there was no substantive change in poverty alleviation because it just detracts 1 million people from poor category. The number of poor people became 35,1 million or 15,97 percent.  The situation of poverty on 2006 quite staggered us because of significant hike. There were 39,3 million people that live below poverty line. Why this happen? The simplest answer is that the cause of high poverty both absolute and relative is the increasing of fuel price. When government decided to adjust fuel price, there were approximately 4 million people fall onto below poverty line. This portend that premium price adjustment has significant influence to poverty.  

The Poverty Data on 2004-2011

Source: Poverty Report published by BPS, 2012

After 2006, the trend of poverty decrease over time. Yet the decreasing is still lumbering. If we look the data above, it can illuminate to us that the decreasing phenomena. As week look on the data, both absolute and relative poverty decrease since 2007 until 2011. We acknowledge that achievement, but government should do better than that result. Actually, government can do that, but many poverty alleviation programs still ineffective to remove poor people from their position. The main problem is inadequacy of correct data.  So, poor people that should acquire assistance from government are not regarded. In my opinion, the devolving of government’s assistance to poor people should accompany with the refinement of data. if we have reliable data, the anti-poverty program that is done by government until now such as PNPM (Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat) and KUK (Kredit Usaha Rakyat) will be delivered to the right target.[] 

Note: In the article above, I admit that there are many grammatical errors in which I still don’t understand well. So, I apologize for those wrong. It is important to know that I am still studying English, so this media just used to publish my work in my study process. Thank you for visiting my blog.