The Jakarta Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded that Jakarta's poverty rate reached 4.67% or 498.290 people in September 2021. It declined by 0.05% or 3.63 thousand people in March 2021.

Jakarta's poverty rate in September 2021 declined by 0.05%

Jakarta BPS Head, Anggoro Dwitjahyono mentioned that poverty rate in Jakarta began to decline after experiencing increase during COVID-19 pandemic.

"In September 2021, it declined at 0.05% and 0.02% compared to March 2021 and September 2020," he said on Monday (1/17).

He assessed, this condition could not be separated from the Jakarta Government's effort in maintaining price stability as seen from inflation rate.

"Besides, there is an increase in people's purchasing power due to the general increase in income," he added.

He mentioned that his side used basic needs approach to measure the poverty rate. In this method, the poverty is seen as an economic inability to meet basic food needs, instead of expenditure side.

A population is categorized as poor if it has an average monthly expenditure per capital below the poverty line.

"Poverty line reflects rupiah value of minimum expenditure that a person needs to meet basic needs for a month," he conveyed.

According to him, it consists of Food Poverty Line (GKM) and Non-Food Poverty Line (GKNM).

GKM is the minimum expenditure to meet food needs, which is equival ent to 2,100 kilo calories per capita per day.

Commodity packages for basic food needs are represented by 52 types of commodities such as grains, tubers, fish, meat, eggs, milk, vegetables, oil, nuts, and fruits.

Meanwhile, GKNM is the minimum expenditure value for non-food needs in form of housing, clothing, education, and health. Commodity packages for non-food needs are represented by 51 types of commodities in urban area and 47 types of commodities in rural area.

"Several indicators used to determine poverty rate are percentage of poor people from total population, poverty depth index, and poverty severity index," he stated.