"The continued decline in the poverty and inequality rates can be attributed to policies that the agency has formulated with the government," Kacaribu said during a hearing meeting with Commission XI of the House of Representatives in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Social protection programs have been successful in preventing the national poverty and inequality rates from rising to the high level that had been predicted by many institutions, including the World Bank, he added.
During the last decade, Indonesia continued to record a constant decline in poverty and inequality rates, but the COVID-19 pandemic halted the trend, he noted.
While 4.78 million people were raised from poverty in the last decade, the COVID-19 pandemic, over the last two years, has sent 2.4 million people below the poverty line, Kacaribu informed.
Social protection programs implemented under the country's economic recovery mission during the COVID-19 pandemic were successful in suppressing the poverty rate to 9.71 percent by September 2021 from 10.19-percent in September 2020, he said.
"Without the expansion of the social protection programs, the World Bank had projected that Indonesia's poverty rate would reach 11.4 percent in 2021," Kacaribu highlighted.
The government has also conceived middle-term strategies to advance the extreme poverty eradication program, which is targeted to conclude by 2024, he added.
"We need to see our performance in 2022, and we must continue programs favorable to our mission's goals," the agency head said.
Of the Rp186.64 trillion budget allocated for social protection programs under the 2021 National Economic Recovery fund, at least Rp171 trillion, equal to 91.5 percent of the budget realization, was spent, he informed.
The budget was spent on providing an electricity fee subsidy to 32.6 million recipients, Internet quota assistance to 66.6 million recipients, and extreme poverty eradication programs targeting 1.16 million recipients in 35 priority districts, Kacaribu added.
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Translator: Astrid Faidlatul, Nabil Ihsan
Editor: Sri Haryati
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