Director of Village Funds, Incentives, Special Autonomy, and Special Privileges of the Directorate General of Fiscal Balance of the Ministry of Finance, Jaka Sucipta, revealed that the role of village funds in efforts to reduce poverty is divided into two things, namely allocation and use.
In terms of allocation, the distribution of village funds targets villages with a high number of poor people. “The poverty variable is the main factor when we allocate village funds. There is a formula allocation, considering the number of poor people,” explained Jaka in a seminar entitled Village Fund Transparency and Poverty Alleviation at his office, Jakarta, Tuesday (6/8).
In addition, the distribution of village funds is also based on affirmative allocation. This is done to sharpen the distribution of funds to underdeveloped and very underdeveloped villages that have a large number of poor people.
Fund allocation is also based on performance. Jaka said that villages that have good performance, especially in reducing poverty rates, will receive village fund appreciation through performance allocation.
Meanwhile, from the usage side, the government is considering the use of village funds by recipients in an effort to reduce poverty rates. For example, Jaka said, the government uses village funds to run social assistance (bansos) programs to reduce poverty.
“We use part of our village funds for BLT and that is still valid until now, although the percentage tends to decrease. That is our commitment to village funds to reduce poverty,” concluded Jaka.
On that occasion, the Ministry of Finance claimed that village funds distributed by the government since 2015 have succeeded in reducing poverty rates. Based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the urban poor population fell from 12.2 million in March 2021 to 11.9 million people in September 2022. Meanwhile, in the same period, the rural poor population fell from 15.4 million people in March 2021 to 14.4 million people. (Z-11)
#Ministry #Finance #Explains #Variables #Village #Fund #Distribution
