Til trods for at Indonesien over de seneste år har forbedret sin økonomi, siver velstanden kun nedad i begrænset grad og halvdelen af det store ø-riges indbyggere på snart en kvart milliard lever stadig i fattigdom.
BANGKOK, 7 november 2013 (IRIN): Indonesia’s economy grew by roughly 6 percent in 2013, but its poverty reduction has nearly stalled with almost half the population living in poverty – and experts struggling to identify and serve the neediest among them.
“It’s true that [social] targeting is not easy and it’s complicated,” Nina Sardjunani, the Indonesian government’s deputy development planning minister, told IRIN.
The decrease in the official poverty rate from 2011-2012 (half a percentage point) was the smallest since 2003, according to the World Bank as cited by Australian National University.
Social targeting – the process used to identify people most in need of social assistance – in Indonesia has improved in recent years, say analysts.
But with some 11.4 percent of the population living in poverty (and another 40 percent hovering near it), the cyclical nature of poverty, time lags between identifying the poor and getting them assistance, and different ways of implementing national welfare programmes at the community level, have all made it difficult to keep Indonesian families from falling into poverty.
All despite the government’s goal to cut poverty to 8 percent of the nearly 247 million population by 2014.
With some 3 percent (nearly eight million people) still to go and only two months until 2014, it is imperative not only to expand poverty alleviation initiatives, but also ensure their efficiency, say experts.
With fuel prices that have risen three times in the past decade and ongoing increases in rice prices (in a heavily rice-dependent country), the government has responded with several social safety nets this past decade.
Safety nets
The government first introduced the Bantuan Langsung Tunai (BLT), an unconditional cash transfer now known as the Bantuan Langsung Semetara Masyarakat (BLSM), to 19 million households every three months from 2005-2006, and from 2008- 2009, to smooth over fuel price shocks.
In June 2013 the government allocated nearly 829 million US dollar to the BLSM, distributing 13.35 dollar to each of 15.5 million households twice between June and October.
The National Team for Accelerating Poverty Reduction (TNP2K), established by the government in 2010, oversees implementation of all public poverty reduction programmes.
The excluded fight back
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/99074/analysis-indonesia-s-social-targeting-challenge
