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WORLD Bank Managing Director Mari Elka Pangestu estimates that the world’s poor population will increase by around 70 million to 20 million due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The World Bank estimates that 70 million to 120 million people in the world will go into poverty,” she said at the World Bank’s Indonesia Economic Prospects (IEP) July 2020 edition in Jakarta.
Not only that, Mari Pangestu said that along with the potential increase in the number of poor people in the world, economic inequality also occurred, including in Indonesia.
Therefore Mari Pangestu said the government needed to provide support in order to prevent the potential increase in the poor population and social inequality, especially for vulnerable groups.
“A policy response is needed that ensures inequality is not exacerbated due to the pandemic,” Mari Pangestu noted.
For Indonesia, Mari Pangestu suggested that the government could expand the scale of outreach in providing social protection stimulus especially for the informal sector.
“Many other countries are carrying out the same policies as Indonesia but what is done in the context of this pandemic is to expand the scale of its reach,” she said.
Then he also asked the Indonesian government to be able to synchronize data so that the social protection stimulus could be realized better.
“This data is for monitoring whether what has been done successfully achieved the goal effectively or not,” Mari Pangestu concluded. [antaranews/photo special]
