An Economic and Social Review on Indonesia's Direct Cash Transfer Program to Poor Families in 2005

This paper contains a report on the findings of a survey on the implementation of the Direct Cash Transfers (Bantuan Langsung Tunai) program. The survey named Susenas (National Socio-Economic Survey) was held across Indonesia in the aftermath of the program in 2006. The economic purpose of this government’s welfare program was to dampen the increasing rate of poverty incidence in Indonesia due to the increase of gas prices. Several issues featured in this paper are the achievement of the program in distributing the cash transfers;, how the recipients used the funds they received; the impact of the cash transfers on the recipients’ working behavior; the socialization method of the program; and finally, the problems that arose during the program’s implementation. The findings are that the program was not properly prepared and not properly organized; it achieves the goal in resisting the increase of poverty rate due to gas price increases.