Govt still optimizing efforts to eradicate extreme poverty

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The government has continued to optimize efforts to completely eradicate extreme poverty by 2024, Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Cultural Affairs, Muhadjir Effendy, has said.

"The government expects that by 2024, our extreme poverty rate will become zero percent," he informed, according to a statement received here on Friday. Statistics Indonesia (BPS) has recorded that as of September 2022, the extreme poverty rate in Indonesia declined to 1.76 percent, he noted.

The coordinating minister said that at an earlier meeting to discuss the progress of efforts for handling extreme poverty, Vice President Ma'ruf Amin had sought and expressed his approval for multi-program assistance for the extremely poor.

Such assistance would involve eligible residents receiving assistance from the Social Affairs Ministry in the form of the Family Hope Program (PKH) and non-cash food assistance (BPNT) benefits, as well as other benefits from the village fund, the regional authority, or private entities, he informed. "The Vice President has also pushed for improving the Extreme Poverty Eradication Acceleration Target, or P3KE, data," Effendy said. Improving the data is necessary to ensure that interventions undertaken through the policy can be made more accurate, he explained.

He then asked all stakeholders to converge their stunting reduction and extreme poverty eradication policies since there is an intersect between the two issues. "The program convergence through the involvement of all stakeholders will be the main key to reducing extreme poverty and stunting cases," he said.

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The coordinating minister informed that program convergence is meant to ensure that interventions can be coordinated and integrated to address child stunting and extreme poverty among priority targets at once.