JAKARTA, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia's Minister for National Development Planning Armida Alisjahbana said on Tuesday that the country had managed to reduce poverty rate in the past five years, mostly contributed by improving figures in 16 provinces.

"Sixteen provinces that managed to have better poverty rate than national figures in the past five years are Aceh, South Sumatra, Bengkulu, Lampung, Central Java, East Java, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, West Kalimantan, Central Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi, Gorontalo, West Sulawesi, Maluku, West Papua and Papua," said Alisjahbana.

She added that provinces of Gorontalo and Maluku, with their efforts, had reached the biggest improvement of 10.38 percent and 10.03 percent, respectively, much higher than the 5.26-percent national rate in 2006-2011.

"One encouraging thing in poverty eradication is that with global uncertainty, the increase in the number of poor people to not poor people has a bigger percentage than not poor becoming poor,"the minister said.

Editor: Luo Yuan