According to the joint statement by BPS and the World Bank, Indonesia's national poverty rate fell from 8.47 percent in March 2025 to 8.07 percent in March 2026. This corresponds to 22.93 million people, 920,000 fewer than a year earlier, according to the government communications agency Bakom, as reported by Antara. According to Databoks, the number of people in poverty also reached its lowest level in the past decade.
How BPS calculates the poverty line
BPS measures poverty based on the cost of living: the agency calculates the minimum amount a person needs each month for food, housing, clothing and transport in 75 urban and rural areas across all provinces and adjusts the figures twice a year to reflect price changes. In March 2026, this threshold stood at Rp669,235 per person per month, equivalent to about US$3.60 a day. That was 4.33 percent higher than the Rp641,443 in September 2025. As IDN Times reported, poverty remained significantly higher in rural areas at 10.67 percent than in cities at 6.34 percent. BPS Deputy for Accounts and Statistical Analysis Edy Mahmud said poverty rates had fallen in all regions compared with September 2025, with the largest decline on Java at 0.21 percentage points. Java nevertheless had the most people in poverty, 12.02 million, or 52.42 percent of all people in poverty in Indonesia. Kalimantan recorded the fewest, at 870,000 people. According to the Jakarta Globe, Mahmud also said the number and proportion of people in poverty had fallen continuously from March 2023 to March 2026.
Two years of Prabowo and Gibran
The government viewed the decline as a success shortly before the second anniversary of President Prabowo Subianto and Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka taking office on October 20, 2026. Bakom Deputy for Partnerships and Media Relations Kurnia Ramadhana said the government was stepping up efforts to combat poverty through social protection, basic services and economic empowerment of the population. As evidence, he cited the BSU wage subsidy, which targeted around 17 million eligible workers in 2025 and provided for a one-time payment of Rp600,000.
Abdul Muhaimin Iskandar, who coordinates the government's poverty reduction efforts, presented BPS figures at the launch of a report on the government's first two years showing that the number of people in extreme poverty fell from 2.8 million in September 2024 to 1.7 million in March 2026. In March 2024, the figure was still 3.56 million people, according to BPS; by March 2026, the number had therefore fallen by more than half. Under this measure, people are considered extremely poor if they spend less than US$2.15 a day according to a purchasing-power-adjusted measure developed by the World Bank, equivalent to about 10,900 rupiah in 2025. According to Abdul Muhaimin Iskandar's ministry, 26.8 million poor families received state assistance and 3.25 million small business owners gained access to low-cost loans during the government's two years in office.
Two measures of the same poverty
¶ For its estimate for 2025, the World Bank uses the threshold for upper-middle-income countries of US$8.30 a day at purchasing power parity. According to the joint statement, the large difference is mainly due to the higher poverty line and not to a deterioration in living conditions: when Indonesia became an upper-middle-income country in 2023, the World Bank raised its benchmark from US$4.20 to US$8.30 per person per day. BPS and the World Bank stress that neither measure is “more correct”; both serve different purposes and complement each other in monitoring poverty in Indonesia. Another development, meanwhile, remains unresolved: the Gini coefficient of expenditure inequality measured by BPS rose to 0.368 in March 2026 from 0.363 in September 2025. BPS itself said that expenditure growth was not benefiting all population groups equally; poverty reduction would therefore need to be accompanied by policies to address wealth disparities in the future.
A rickshaw driver and his changed welfare classification
¶ Rickshaw driver Timbul only learned that he had been placed in decile 9 when he sought to apply for a certificate of financial need for his son's student aid. As a result, his son Luki could not receive a Kartu Indonesia Pintar scholarship for his studies, for which Rp15 million was due in the first semester. The acting head of BPS DIY, Endang Tri Wahyuningsih, said her agency had checked Timbul's information; in addition to operating his rickshaw, he also ran a small chicken business. A few days later, BPS head Amalia Adininggar Widyasanti announced that the classification had been corrected to decile 3 following a data update, as detikSumut reported. The case concerns a single welfare classification and says nothing about the poverty rate measured nationwide.
Target: 6.0 to 6.5 percent by 2027
The government is targeting a poverty rate of 6.0 to 6.5 percent for 2027. Its goal is also for no one to be living in extreme poverty by the end of 2026. According to BPS and the World Bank, their measures can also show different trends in poverty because they use different adjustment methods.