Why rural poverty remains higher across Flores and NTT
NTT’s latest official figures show poverty declining in 2025, while rural residents remained far more likely to be poor than urban residents across the province.
Editor: Mursyid Sonsang
· 2 min read
NTT’s poverty rate fell to 17.50 percent in September 2025, but poverty remains substantially higher in rural areas than in towns. The provincial government’s 2025 report, citing BPS, records 1.03 million poor people, including 21.48 percent of rural residents and 6.96 percent of urban residents. The figures place Flores and the surrounding islands within a wider provincial economic challenge.
What was NTT’s poverty rate?
The poverty rate was 17.50 percent in September 2025, according to the NTT provincial government’s 2025 regional-government report, which cites Statistics Indonesia (BPS). The report says the rate was down 1.10 percentage points from March 2025 and down 1.52 percentage points from September 2024.
How many people were classified as poor?
The report records 1.03 million poor people in September 2025, according to BPS data cited by the NTT government in 2025. It says the total fell by 57.09 thousand people from March 2025 and by 76.24 thousand from September 2024.
Is poverty higher in rural Flores and the islands?
Rural poverty was 21.48 percent in September 2025, compared with 6.96 percent in urban areas, according to the NTT government’s 2025 report. The same source records 919.15 thousand poor people in rural areas and 112.54 thousand in urban areas.
What does the latest BPS release show?
BPS NTT separately reported that poverty stood at 18.60 percent in March 2025, a decrease of 0.42 percentage points from September 2024 and 0.88 percentage points from March 2024. The March and September figures describe different survey periods, so they should not be treated as the same measurement.
Why does this matter across Flores?
Flores is part of NTT, so provincial poverty statistics provide context for economic conditions across the island and neighbouring islands, although the figures here are provincial rather than Flores-only. The rural-urban gap is the clearest pattern in the latest September 2025 data.
Sources
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