Government Launches Report on Poverty
Minister of State and of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and
Official Spokesperson for the Government of Timor-Leste
Dili, September 29th, 2016
Government Launches Report on Poverty
The Government has launched a report setting out the key results from the Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards conducted in 2014-2015. The report, Poverty in Timor-Leste 2014, prepared by the General Directorate of Statistics with technical assistance from the World Bank, confirms that Timor-Leste has made significant progress in improving living standards since 2007.
The executive summary notes “At the national poverty line, which represents the cost of meeting basic needs in relation to food, shelter and non-food items in Timor-Leste, the proportion of Timorese living in poverty declined from 50.4% in 2007 to an estimated 41.8% in 2014.”
Improvements in key poverty dimensions since 2007 are also encouraging. Between 2007 and 2014 the proportion of households with no electricity connection dropped from 64% to 28%, the proportion of those with at least one child not attending school dropped from 42% to 17%, and the proportion with at least one child under five years of age with wasting dropped from 20% to 7%.
The quality of housing was also shown to have improved along with household access to amenities such as water and electricity. The ownership of consumer durables was shown to have risen significantly since 2007 with the percentage of the population living in households that own a TV more than doubling, a motorcycle more than trebling and the percentage living in a household that owns a mobile phone rose from 12% to 68%.
The Ministry of Finance state that the Survey of Living Standards conducted over a 12-month period from April 2014 to April 2015 is the highest quality survey of its kind undertaken in Timor-Leste with a sample size 30% bigger than the previous survey in 2007. Vice Minister of Finance, H.E. Hélder Lopes reminded that the report was “not the end but the beginning of an exercise to exploit the rich detail of the data-source.” This will include further analytical work and the use of other tools such as the Multi Dimensional Poverty Index.
Government Spokesperson, Minister of State Agio Pereira, congratulated all involved in the survey and report. He noted “the picture we see in the report is encouraging and our progress should be celebrated. Equally important, is acknowledging that the level of poverty in our communities is still unacceptable and so we have much more work to do. The good results presented in this new report can inspire us to press on with even more vigor to accelerate our achievements in the years ahead.”ENDS
