Fedina S. Sundaryani, Jakarta – President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has called on his Cabinet ministers to create a policy to address socioeconomic disparity in the country.
"All citizens should have the same opportunities without exception," he said during the opening of a closed-door Cabinet meeting at the Bogor Palace in West Java on Tuesday.
"In December 2016, I ordered the coordinating economic minister to compile a policy that eradicates the long-standing socioeconomic disparity," the President added.
Although Jokowi acknowledged that the country's Gini ratio – the most commonly used measure of inequality in which zero reflects perfect equality and 1 reflects perfect inequality – has decreased significantly since 2015, the government still had a lot of work to do.
According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the country's Gini ratio dropped to 0.387 in March 2016 from 0.402 in September 2015. (bbn)