KONTAN.CO.ID - JAKARTA. The Indonesian government is targeting an extreme poverty rate of 0% by 2024. Currently, the extreme poverty rate stands at 1.12%. To achieve the zero percent target, the government is making various efforts, including allocating social protection funds.

Deputy for Human Development Policy Support and Development Equity of the Vice Presidential Secretariat, Suprayoga Hadi, said the government is preparing two main policy instruments to accelerate the eradication of extreme poverty. 

First, improving the accuracy of targets through the integration of social economic registration data (regsosek) that covers almost the entire population of Indonesia. Second, convergence by ensuring cross-sector and cross-layer government programs can reach pockets of poverty and extremely poor groups.

In addition, the government is preparing and implementing three strategies. These are reducing the burden of public expenditure through the provision of social protection access, and reducing the number of poverty pockets, one of which is the provision of social assistance.  

Then, increasing income is through economic empowerment. "If 0.0% is impossible, our more optimistic target is between 0.5%-0.7%, but the truly optimistic one might be around 0.3%," said Yoga at the Vice Presidential Palace, yesterday.

The social protection budget (perlinsos) in 2024 will reach IDR 493.5 trillion. Of this amount, IDR 76.3 trillion is for economic empowerment. In addition to the state budget support, there is also a need for increased financing commitment from provincial, district/city, to village level governments through the allocation of regional budgets and village budgets in the implementation of strategic intervention strategies to reduce expenditure burdens, increase income and reduce poverty pockets at the regional to village level.

The Head of the Policy Team for Economic Capacity Enhancement of the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K), Raden Muhamad Purnagunawan added, that the low rate of economic empowerment is due to the low interest of the extremely poor. 

"Unlike social assistance that everyone wants to receive, not everyone wants to be trained, or empowered to have their own business," he said.

Regarding the political year, the potential for the social protection budget to be politicized is wide open if supervision from the public and related parties is weak. The Chairman of the Indonesian Policy Analyst Association (AAKI), Trubus Rahadiansyah, believes that the distribution of social assistance next year is prone to politicization. In addition, the distribution of social assistance must be carried out with optimal supervision. 

"In a political year, if public suspicion arises about political interests behind this social assistance, it is certainly very reasonable," Trubus explained to KONTAN, yesterday.

As of March 2022, the number of extremely poor was 5.59 million people. By March 2023, the number had dropped to 3.1 million people or 1.12%. It is recorded that 56% of the extremely poor population is concentrated in five provinces, namely West Java, Central Java, East Java, Papua, and East Nusa Tenggara. 

Editor: Syamsul Azhar