Indonesian Economy Grows, But Most Of The Rich Benefit

CNBC Indonesia/Andrean Kristianto

Indonesian Economy Grows, But Most Of The Rich Benefit

Friday, 21 Feb 2025

Special Advisor to the President of the Republic of Indonesia for Economic Affairs and National Development, Bambang Brodjonegoro, has been open about the impact of Indonesia's economic growth in recent years.

He sees that economic growth in Indonesia so far has only benefited many rich people, while people with middle to poor incomes have not felt much impact from Indonesia's economic growth.

At the 2025 Indonesia Economic Summit held by the Indonesia Business Council (IBC), Bambang said this was reflected in the Gini coefficient or Gini Ratio data. According to him, data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) only talks about the lowest class of society, starting from the poverty line and the number of middle-income people. Meanwhile, the number of high-income people is rarely disclosed.

"That's why every time we have a Gini Ratio it's usually underestimated. I mean this data is still better than it should be. If we divide society into five different income groups, high income, middle income, prospective middle income, near poor and poor, unfortunately BPS data only talks about the bottom, the poverty line, people living on the poverty line," said Bambang at the Indonesia Economic Summit 2025 event held by the Indonesia Business Council (IBC) at the Shangri-La Hotel, Jakarta, Tuesday (2/18/2025).

Even so, Bambang is quite happy with the latest data showing that the poverty rate is below 9%, which indicates that people living on the poverty line have decreased.

However, if viewed as a whole, the population distribution tends towards the bottom three groups, namely the prospective poor group, the near poor group, and the poor group itself.