Over 26 million Indonesian people live in poverty (Photo: Antara) Jakarta (VNA) – Statistics Indonesia (BPS) has announced that as of September 2022, the number ofpoor people in the country had increased to 26.36 million people, making up 9.57% of thetotal population and up 0.03% compared to March 2022.
Head of BPS Margo Yuwono said the poverty rate in September2022 was affected by several factors such as hikes in material prices and mass layoffs.
The number of poor people in urban areas increasedby 160,000 people, from 11.82 million in March 2022 to 11.98 million inSeptember 2022. Meanwhile, the number of down-and-out people in rural areas rose by40,000 people, from 14.34 million people in March 2022 to 14.38 million in September2022.
Margo said the majority of the poor is concentrated on Java andSumatra. In Java, the figure had reached 13.94 million people as of September2022, mostly in East (4.24 million) and West (4.05 million) Java.
According to Febrio Kacaribu, head of the fiscal policyagency under the Finance Ministry, the minor increase in the poverty rate inSeptember 2022 was closely related to the food inflation, in June, July, August, and September, which reached a peak of 11.5% inJuly 2022.
He added the Government's decision to increase energysubsidies to 551 trillion RP (36.3 billion USD) became the main factor inmaintaining the poverty rate while quickly carrying out measures to reduce foodinflation./.
