Big drop in poverty rate

PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia more than halved its poverty statistics over the past three years, with the number of poor people now standing at less than 110,000 nationwide, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop.

He said the country’s overall poverty rate dropped to 1.7% in 2012, compared to 3.8% in 2009.

“With this achievement, the target under the 10th Malaysia Plan to reduce overall po­verty to 2% in 2015 has been achieved three years earlier.

“This is a result of rapid economic development and the effectiveness of poverty eradication programmes carried out by the Go­­vernment,” he said at a press conference to announce the findings of the 2012 National Household Income Study here.

He said the fall in incidences of poverty happened in both urban and rural areas, with urban poverty falling to just 1% last year compared to 1.7% in 2009, while rural areas registered a significant drop from 8.4% in 2009 to just 3.4% in 2012.

Sabah registered the biggest reduction in poverty from 19.7% of the population in 2009 to 8.1% three years later.

The minister said all states registered a reduction in poverty rates, with marked improvements in Penang, Selangor, Malacca and the federal territories – all of which ave­raged 0% hardcore poor in their areas as at 2012.

“This is proof that the Federal Government’s initiatives to eradicate poverty have succeeded and been of benefit to the rakyat regardless of differences in political ideology,” he said.

Meanwhile, Malaysians enjoyed an annual increase of 7.2% to their average household income over the 2009-2012 period, or a nearly a RM1,000 hike in their average monthly income from RM4,025 in 2009 to RM5,000 in 2012.

Despite similar growth rates, urban household income grew at 6.6% per annum from RM4,705 a month in 2009 to RM5,742 in 2012 while rural household income went up at a rate of 6.4% a year from a monthly average of RM2,545 in 2009 to RM3,080 in 2012.

Despite this, he added that Malaysia still improved on wealth distribution, having secured a lower score of 0.431 on its “Gini coefficient” (a system to measure inequality in wealth distribution) in 2012, compared to 0.441 in 2009.