Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment urges update of poverty data for targeted assistance

Data must become increasingly accurate so that government interventions are on target. Jakarta (ANTARA) - Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment Abdul Muhaimin Iskandar emphasised the importance of improving the accuracy of the National Single Socio-Economic Data (DTSEN) so that all social assistance and community empowerment programmes truly reach their intended targets. “Data must become increasingly accurate so that government interventions are on target. Therefore, the updating and integration of DTSEN must continue to be strengthened down to the district and village levels,” said Coordinating Minister Muhaimin Iskandar in Jakarta on Saturday. He made these remarks while leading a meeting with the Social Minister and the Head of Statistics Indonesia (BPS). Coordinating Minister Muhaimin Iskandar also urged the Social Minister to accelerate the poverty graduation process in accordance with the mandate of Presidential Instruction No. 8 of 2025, so that social assistance recipients can advance towards economic independence. Meanwhile, Social Minister Saifullah Yusuf stated that cross-ministerial coordination continues to be carried out to measure the gradual achievements in alleviating poverty and extreme poverty. According to him, one of the main steps taken is updating DTSEN together with Statistics Indonesia through strengthening the data system down to the village level. “We, together with BPS, continue to update the data. Currently, there are already more than 70,000 village data operators connected through the SIKS-NG (Next Generation Social Welfare Information System) application with district/city social services, provinces, the Ministry of Social Affairs, and DTSEN managed by BPS,” said Saifullah Yusuf. The Social Minister also said that in the distribution of social assistance in the second quarter of 2026, there were more than 470,000 new beneficiary families (KPM) who had not previously received assistance in the first quarter.