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The number of poor people in Indonesia fell 130,000 over a six month period last year, putting the total number at 29.89 million in September, government data shows.

Suryamin, acting chief of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), said that in the six months to September, the largest decline in poverty was in urban areas, where the number of poor people fell by about 100,000.

“The number of urban poor decreased from 11.05 million to now 10.95 million,” Suryamin said.

In rural areas, the poor decreased by approximately 30,000, from 18.97 million in March to 18.94 million by September.

Suryamin said the figures showed that the country’s poor were now 12 percent of the population. He attributed the decline in impoverished Indonesians to relatively low inflation, averaging 2.25 percent, for important commodities.

“Several essential commodities such as cooking oil, sugar, chili and red pepper have experienced lower retail prices,” Suryamin said.

The economy in the third quarter of 2011 grew 6.5 percent, while household consumption spending rose by only 3.6 percent, helping to lift many above the poverty level.

Suryamin cited rising average incomes for farmers and growth in the micro and small manufacturing industries as additional developments that contributed to reduced poverty.

He said that the level of unemployment fell by 0.24 percentage points between February and August, also helping to push down the number of poor.

The BPS chief said basic food commodities were playing a more important role in poverty alleviation than non-food expenditures, such as housing, clothing, education and health care.

“The commodities that are influential are rice, kretek clove cigarettes, sugar, eggs, instant noodles, tempe and tofu,” he said.

Suryamin said the poverty line was now defined as monthly per capita earnings of Rp 243,729 ($26.80). He said that figure had been Rp 233,740 in March.

He did not say how the poverty line was determined, but in the past, officials have said that the calculation was based the price of a basket of goods and services.

Suryamin said that Maluku and Papua had the largest percentage of its people in poverty, at about 25 percent, while Kalimantan had the lowest at 7 percent. But in terms of sheer numbers, Java was the island that hosted the most poor Indonesians, at 16.74 million people, while the major island with the smallest number of poor was Kalimantan, with 97,000 people.

Hamonangan Ritonga, the director for social resilience statistics at the BPS, said that although the number of poor was declining, he did not consider the reduction to be significant.

“The number of poor is slow to decline because we are in a situation of chronic ‘hardcore poverty,’ ” Hamonangan said.

He said that in such conditions, the rich tended to benefit most from the economy’s rapid growth while the poor, without sufficient access to capital, became relatively poorer.

“Targeting an annual 1 percent decline in the number of poor is very difficult, even more so when they live in areas far from the reaches of the government,” he said.

Antara