<![CDATA[This study examines the effectiveness of the Regional Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBD) realization within the Social Assistance (Bansos) expenditure post to reduce the poverty rate in Cilegon City from 2020 to 2025. Poverty in the industrial area of Cilegon is a structural issue that requires well-targeted local fiscal policy interventions. The focus of this research is evaluating budget performance, analyzing the correlation patterns between budget fluctuations and poverty rates, and identifying governance challenges in its distribution. Data collection was conducted at the Regional Development Planning, Research, and Innovation Agency (Bapperida) of Cilegon City using participatory observation methods, time-series secondary data compilation, budget document evaluation, and field interviews. The analytical results show that the realization of social assistance expenditure fluctuated; starting at IDR 4.07 billion in 2020, peaking at IDR 8.23 billion in 2022 as a post-pandemic recovery response, and subsequently declining to a range of IDR 4.46 billion to IDR 4.88 billion from 2023 to 2025. Concurrently, the poverty rate was successfully suppressed from its peak of 4.24% in 2021 to 3.44% in 2025. The findings confirm that the relationship between social assistance allocation and poverty reduction is non-linear, but rather influenced by time lag and threshold effects. Poverty alleviation proves to be more effective when budget efficiency is combined with targeting accuracy based on the Integrated Social Welfare Data (DTKS) and economic empowerment programs. The primary governance obstacles include weak cross-agency coordination due to a silo mentality, data validation anomalies such as inclusion and exclusion errors, and a supervisory framework that merely focuses on budget absorption outputs. In conclusion, the agency is recommended to establish an integrated cross-sectoral coordination desk, strengthen the integration of a real-time Single Data system, transform consumptive social assistance schemes into productive ones, and implement an evaluation framework based on community welfare impacts (outcome).]]>
