WORLD BANK SETS NEW AIM FOR POVERTY LEVEL BY 2020

World Bank Group President, Jim
Yong Kim, in Washington at the
ongoing IMF/World Bank Group
annual general meetings
announced that the World Bank
has set an interim target to
reduce global poverty to 9
percent in 2020, which, if
achieved, would mark the first
time the rate has fallen into the
single digit.
This looks a tall order for Africa
countries especially Nigeria
where the poverty rate has been
officially put at about 64 per cent.
The year 2020 is remarkable for
Nigeria as it plans to become the
20th largest economy in that
year.
The milestone of reducing global
poverty to a single digit by 2020
was based on a World Bank
economic analysis of global
poverty trends toward reaching
a goal of ending extreme poverty
by 2030. Living in extreme
poverty is defined as below $1.25
a day.
World Bank Group economists
said if developing countries
continued their strong growth
rates in the coming seven years -
far from a given -- the global rate
would dip below 10 percent for
the first time since such figures
were first reported in the World
Development Report in 1990.
Since 1990, when 43 percent of
the people living in developing
countries lived in poverty, global
poverty has been in a steady
retreat.
An estimated 1.9 billion people
lived in poverty in 1990, and that
number fell to 1.2 billion in 2010
according to the Bank report.
Reaching 9 percent in 2020
would mean an estimated 690
million people would still be
living in extreme poverty. If
achieved, the world would have
510 million fewer people living in
poverty in 2020, compared to a
decade earlier. That would be the
equivalent of half of the
population of the continent of
Africa, or more than double the
population of Indonesia.
"Setting this target reminds us
we are on the cusp of something
historic - ridding the world of the
scourge of people living in such
abysmal conditions," Kim said
yesterday on the eve of the
opening of the 2013 Annual
Meetings of the World Bank
Group and the International
Monetary Fund. "It also means
that all of us - developing country
leaders and their partners,
including the World Bank Group -
need to up their game now in
order to end extreme poverty.
We need to help developing
countries accelerate growth,
attract private investment, and
create good jobs."
Last April, the Governors of the
World Bank Group endorsed two
goals for the organisation that of
ending extreme poverty by 2030
and boosting shared prosperity
of the bottom 40 percent of the
population in all developing
countries.
At this week's annual meetings,
the Governors of the World Bank
Group will consider the Bank
Group strategy that for the first
time will unite all parts of the
institution - the Bank, which
works with governments; IFC, the
private sector arm; and MIGA,
which issues political risk
insurance - and align them
toward meeting its two goals.