Ma'ruf Amin's Strategy To Overcome Poverty: Reduce The Expenditure Burden And Empower The Poor

Vice President Ma'ruf Amin opened the IX Zakat Forum's National Conference (Munas) virtually from Jakarta, Thursday, June 3. (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin mentioned two main strategies carried out by the Indonesian government to tackle poverty in the community. The first strategy is to reduce the burden of spending on the poor and vulnerable groups through social protection programs and subsidies, said Vice President Ma'ruf when he was a keynote speaker at the National Deliberation. (Munas) IX Forum Zakat virtually from Jakarta, Thursday. "Second, empowering in order to increase the productivity of the poor and vulnerable groups to increase their economic capacity," he said. The government also targets extreme poverty in Indonesia, which is categorized as people with an income of less than 1 .9 US dollars per day, reaching zero percent by the end of 2024.

The Vice President explained that the COVID-19 pandemic has also greatly affected the increase in the national poverty rate. "The COVID-19 pandemic has also resulted in an increase in the national poverty rate from 9.78 percent in March 2020 to 10.19 percent in September 2020," he explained. Poverty is not only related to economic problems, said the Vice President, but also limited access to education, health and employment. "Every individual's ability to recover and get out of poverty is also different," he said. parties can play an active role in minimizing the poverty level which is the first target in the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) action plan. "Countries in the world have agreed to place poverty alleviation as a priority target in the Sustainable Development Goals," he said.