DEN: Digital Social Protection Trial Shows Welfare Aid Is Better Targeted

Jakarta (ANTARA) – National Economic Council (DEN) member Mochammad Firman Hidayat said a trial of digitalising social protection (Perlinsos) had reduced errors in social assistance beneficiary data, potentially enabling aid to be better targeted.

“Digitalising Perlinsos can make the social assistance process more transparent and better targeted,” Firman told reporters at the Presidential Palace complex in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Firman said the Perlinsos digitalisation trial had been carried out in all 514 districts and cities in Indonesia, with 11.5 million households registered in the system.

Exclusion errors occur when people who are eligible for assistance are not recorded as beneficiaries. Inclusion errors, by contrast, occur when people who are not eligible are included in the beneficiary data.

Firman said that, with support from 775,000 Perlinsos agents, around 600,000 applicants were being registered in the system each day.

Meanwhile, DEN Chair Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said the government also planned to change the subsidy distribution mechanism, moving from product-based subsidies to direct cash transfers.