As A Result Of COVID-19, 120 Million People In The World Enter The New Poor List

Capture the screen of World Bank Managing Director Mari Elka Pangestu. (Mery Handayani / VOI)

JAKARTA - The World Bank estimates that around 70 million to 120 million people in the world will fall into poverty this year. This is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

World Bank Managing Director Mari Elka Pangestu said the increase in the global poverty rate would automatically increase the Gini ratio. This means that the level of population inequality in many countries will also increase, including in Indonesia.

Mari Elka assessed that the Indonesian government needs to provide support in order to prevent the potential for additional poverty and social disparities, especially for vulnerable groups.

"Poverty will occur, so a policy response is needed to ensure that inequality is not exacerbated by the pandemic," he said at the launch of the Indonesia Economic Prospect, Thursday, July 16.

On the other hand, Mari also suggested that the government could expand the scale of outreach in providing social protection stimulus, especially for the informal sector.

Furthermore, he also asked the Indonesian government to synchronize data so that the social protection stimulus could be better realized.

"This data is for monitoring whether what has been done effectively reaches the goal or not," he said.

Previously, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) noted that the number of poor people in Indonesia rose 1.63 million people from 24.79 million people to 26.42 million people as of March 2020. This increase occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

March 2020, the level of expenditure inequality of the Indonesian population as measured by the Gini Ratio is 0.381. This figure is an increase of 0.001 points compared to the September 2019 Gini Ratio of 0.380 and a decrease of 0.001 points compared to the March 2019 Gini Ratio of 0.382 # ReleaseBPS pic.twitter.com/1BIeJrUTai

- Central Bureau of Statistics (@bps_statistics) July 15, 2020

Head of BPS Suhariyanto said the poverty rate has now reached 9.78 percent of the total national population. DKI Jakarta, West Java and Banten contributed the highest poverty rates in March.

In detail, the poverty rate in DKI Jakarta rose 1.11 percent from 3.42 percent to 4.53 percent. Followed by West Java, which rose 1.06 percent from 6.82 percent to 7.88 percent. Then, Banten's poverty rate appears to have increased by 0.98 percent. Poverty in the region is in the position of 5.92 percent from 4.94 percent previously.