Government Claims Number of Extremely Poor People Has Decreased
Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment Muhaimin Iskandar has claimed that the extreme poverty rate in Indonesia has decreased from 1.26% of the total poor population in March 2024 to 0.78% in September 2025. He stated that this achievement is part of the implementation of Presidential Instruction No. 8 of 2025 on Optimising the Implementation of Poverty Alleviation and the Eradication of Extreme Poverty.
“There are around 0.48% of extremely poor people who have moved up a class,” said Muhaimin while leading a ministerial-level meeting on evaluating poverty alleviation performance, at the Plaza of the Social Security Organising Agency for Employment, Jakarta, on Monday, 27 April 2026.
According to the Decree of the Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture No. 32 of 2022, extreme poverty is a situation that completely disconnects an individual from the social and economic system. Meanwhile, the World Bank defines extreme poverty based on per capita expenditure. People living on less than USD 1.9 PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) per day, or around Rp10,739 per person per day, are categorised as extremely poor. This means a family of four with monthly expenditure below Rp1,288,680 falls into the extreme poverty category.
The ministerial-level meeting was attended by several members of the Merah Putih Cabinet, including Minister of Social Affairs Saifullah Yusuf; Minister of Religious Affairs Nasaruddin Umar; Minister of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises Maman Abdurahman; Minister of Economy and Creativity Teuku Riefky Harsya; Minister of State Apparatus Utilisation and Bureaucratic Reform Rini Widyantini; and Head of the National Nutrition Agency Dadan Hindayana.
Muhaimin stated that the current number of extremely poor people in Indonesia is 2.2 million, down from 3.56 million previously. He said the government has conducted interventions by providing social assistance to them.
The Chairman General of the National Awakening Party said that several social assistance programmes have targeted 8.56 million poor families or 93.6% of the total targets. “56.7% of them receive more than one intervention programme simultaneously,” Muhaimin stated.
One of the intervention programmes is free nutritious meals (MBG). He mentioned that the number of MBG beneficiaries to date is 61.9 million people.
Muhaimin explained that the government has allocated a total State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBN) of Rp503.2 trillion to implement poverty alleviation programmes, including support from regional government budgets of Rp129 trillion.