Jakarta – The government is accelerating efforts to bring down Indonesia's Gini ratio to 0.370 by 2019, from the current ratio of 0.393.

The Gini ration is a measure of wealth inequality, in which zero represents complete equality and one represents complete inequality.

"We hope the figure will decrease once again; if not to 0.36, then to 0.37," National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) head Bambang Brodjonegoro said in Jakarta on Thursday as reported by tempo.co.

The figure is more optimistic than the government's target, which was set at 0.380. He said the government was working to reduce inequality both between the poor and wealthy, as well as between regions.

Meanwhile, the government is also targeting to bring down Indonesia's poverty rate to between 7 and 8 percent from 11.22 percent in 2015.

The country has already launched social safety net programs, such cash and rice assistance for low income families to improve their welfare.

"We hope that the effort to reduce inequality will be carried out more sustainably," Bambang said, adding that one of the programs was to encourage the unemployed to open their own businesses. (bbn).

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2017/08/11/indonesia-to-push-down-poverty-inequality-rates.html