JAKARTA. After two years, the President Joko Widodo administration is facing several major challenges, mainly related to budget, to decrease poverty rate and social gap. Minister of Social Affairs Khofifah Indar Parawansa said that the ministry cannot optimize the Family Hope Program (PKH) due to the lack of budget. Let alone, the government through 2016 Revised State Budget has cut budget for Ministry of Social Affairs by Rp 800 billion According to Khofifah, the revision has decreased the ideal government intervention in the poor households’ expenditure. Khofifah added that the ideal rates of government intervention to poor households’ expenditure are 16% to 19%. Before the state budget revision, government had made a 14% intervention. However, the revision had decreased the intervention to only 9.7%.
Aside of budget constrain, poverty eradication is facing problem in terms of sporadic programs in various ministries, such as the program of Indonesian Health Card (KIS) under the Ministry of Health, and the program of Indonesian Smart Card under the Ministry of Education and Cultural. Khofifah said that the programs should be synergized therefore the intervention programs on social empowerment and poverty eradication of several ministries and institutions may have similar target of beneficiaries. Despite of the challenges, Khofifah claimed that to date the programs on poverty eradication has run effectively. As of March 2016, the poverty rate has dropped by 0.36% from 11.22% in March 2014 to 10.86%. Deputy III at Presidential Staff Office Denni Puspa Purbasari said that aside of the decrease in poverty rate, the gini ratio has also declined during March 2014-March 2016. During the period, the gini ratio decreased from 0.41 to 0.39. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has also decreased during the first two years of President Joko Widodo administration. The unemployment rate had declined from 5.94% in August 2014 to 5.5% in February 2016. “The main challenge now is how to create quality jobs, since a lot of workforces are now working at informal sector”, she said. Has not yet been effective in rural area Deputy for Social Statistc at National Statistic Agency (BPS) Sairi said that the percentage of poor people in urban area decreased more rapidly than in rural area. “The poverty rate in urban area has decreased by 0,55 points from 8.34% in March 2014 to 7.79% in March this year,” Sairi said. During the same period, the poverty rate in rural area only decreased by 0.26 points from 14.37% to 14.11%.
According to Sairi, the slow decrease in poverty rate in rural area related to the slow increase in the wages of farm workers and the high number of smallholder farmers, mainly in rural area in Java. Researcher at The Institute for Ecosoc Rights Sri Palupi said that the current government programs have not yet been effective to cope with poverty and social gap problems. In this case, gini ratio is not the only criteria in observing social gap. The decrease in farmer’s exchange rate, as well as the growing power of corporates at the sectors of plantation, mining, and industries in regional area reflect that the programs for reducing social gap have not yet been effective. Therefore, the government is suggested to direct the social policy to rural area, with farm sector as the priority, on the grounds that most of poor people are farmers, who are living in rural area. (Translator: Muhammad Farid)
