A nation with one of the high­est rates of poverty in Asia has seen it’s per­cent­age fall. Indonesia’s poverty rate has fallen to 14.15 from 15.42 a year ago.

From this Reuters story that we found in the Guardian, we read some of the fac­tors that may have led to the drop.

The num­ber of poor peo­ple fell to 32.53 mil­lion in March, from 34.96 mil­lion in the same period a year, the bureau said, based on a sur­vey of 68,000 house­holds. The total pop­u­la­tion is about 226 mil­lion.

The gov­ern­ment defines those who spend less than 200,262 rupiah a month on aver­age as below the poverty line. One of the most impor­tant fac­tors affect­ing monthly spend­ing is the price of rice, a sta­ple food.

Rice accounts for about a quar­ter of monthly spend­ing for the poor in the cities, and about 35 per­cent of the spend­ing for the poor liv­ing in villages.

The price of rice rose 7.8 per­cent in March com­pared to a year ago, a slower pace than infla­tion over the same period, the bureau said, adding that farm­ers’ aver­age daily income increased around 13 per­cent in the period.

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