Nusa Dua, Bali (ANTARA) – Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture (PMK) Muhadjir Effendy stated on Sunday that the 2023 ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) forum is an opportunity to generate ideas and formulate strategic steps to overcome poverty.”This forum is the right occasion to achieve a society free from poverty with collaborative, synergistic, and integrated steps, and also to realize a prosperous Indonesia, a resilient economy, and a prosperous society in the Southeast Asia region,” he said during theASCCKnowledge Forum in Bali. He explained that in the last three decades, the number of extreme poverty levels, namely residents with purchasing power parity (PPP) below US$1.9 per capita per day, has also decreased significantly. ccording to him, in the 1990s, the rate of extreme poverty in ASEAN reached 49 percent and is currently estimated to be below 10 percent. Three decades later, the extreme poverty rate in ASEAN member countries in 2020 was already below five percent, and some countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, had even reached zero percent, while Laos still recorded an extreme poverty rate in 2018 of 10 percent, Effendy remarked. He said that the success of poverty alleviation in the last three decades and the ability to deal with rising poverty due to the impact of the pandemic and the global crisis are provisions to strengthen poverty alleviation interventions and formulate future strategic steps. “The development of good and significant poverty rates in the last three decades shows that governments in ASEAN member countries have a big commitment to alleviating poverty and creating prosperity for their people,” he conveyed. However, he admits that poverty alleviation efforts in Indonesia and ASEAN member countries are still facing serious challenges. He mentioned that the threat of a global recession, climate change, and geopolitical factors are the main challenges to reduce the poverty rate in the region. s an effort to overcome these various impacts, he continued, ASEAN needs to develop a development agenda that is resilient, sustainable, inclusive, and adaptive to face unexpected potential crises and disasters. Effendy stated that energy security and food security must become the government’s main orientation by strengthening social protection schemes and subsidies, especially for the poor and vulnerable people. “In addition, also strengthen the business sector through the Real Sector Safety Net and Financial Sector Safety Net,” he remarked.

Source: Antara News Agency