Nigeria, third on world poverty index-- World Bank

THE World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim,
yesterday, at the ongoing IMF/World Bank
Spring Meetings restated that Nigeria is one
of the top five countries that has the largest
number of poor. Nigeria, he said ranked third
in the world while India ranked number one with 33 per cent of the
world poor. China is
ranked second with 13 per cent of the
world's poor, followed by Nigeria where
seven per cent of the world poor live in. He
said that Bangladesh has six per cent share of
the world's poor while the Democratic Republic of Congo has five per cent of the
world's poor population. Jim Yong Kim said these five countries are
home to 760 million of the world's poor,
adding that another five countries, Indonesia,
Pakistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya would
encompass almost 80 per cent of the extreme
poor. Noting that a sharp focus on these will be
central to ending poverty, the world Bank
President said "while economic growth
remains vital for reducing poverty, growth
has its limits, according to a new World Bank
paper released today. Countries need to complement efforts to enhance
growth with
policies that allocate more resources to the
extreme poor. These resources can be
distributed through the growth process itself,
by promoting more inclusive growth, or
through government programs, such as conditional and direct cash
transfers. Direct cash transfers "It is imperative not just to lift
people out of
extreme poverty; it is also important to
make sure that, in the long run, they do not
get stuck just above the extreme poverty
line due to a lack of opportunities that might
impede progress toward better livelihoods. Economic growth has been
vital for reducing
extreme poverty and improving the lives of
many poor people. Yet, even if all countries
grow at the same rates as over the past 20
years, and if the income distribution remains
unchanged, world poverty will only fall by 10 percent by 2030, from
17.7 percent in 2010.
This is simply not enough, and we need a
laser like focus on making growth more
inclusive and targeting more programmes to
assist the poor directly if we're going to
end extreme poverty." Kim added: "To end extreme poverty, the
vast numbers of the poorest - those earning
less than $1.25 a day - will have to decrease
by 50 million people each year until 2030.
This means that one million people each
week will have to lift themselves out of poverty for the next 16
years. This will be
extraordinarily difficult, but I believe we can
do it. This can be the generation that ends
extreme poverty. "Growth alone is unlikely to end extreme
poverty by 2030 because as extreme
poverty declines, growth on its own tends to
lift fewer people out of poverty. This is
because, by this stage, many of the people
still in extreme poverty live in situations where improving their
lives is extremely
difficult. Even if there is no change in
inequality, the "poverty-reducing power"
of economic growth is less in countries that
are initially more unequal." Extreme poverty Senior Vice President and
Chief Economist at
the World Bank, Kaushik Basu, said, "It is a
sad commentary on our prosperous world
that over one billion people live in extreme
poverty. It is a welcome call from the World
Bank Group to not just mitigate poverty but bring it to closure and
also to strive for a
more equitable world. To achieve these ends
we will need determination, but also ideas
and innovation, for the ways of the economy
can be strange." He noted that the World Bank's shared
prosperity goal, endorsed by shareholders in
2013, provides a window into understanding
inequalities of income and opportunities,
stressing that while significant progress has
been made in lifting people out of extreme poverty, many people remain
poor, often
due to lack of opportunity. Tackling poverty requires understanding
where the greatest number of poor live,
while at the same time also concentrating on
where hardship is most pervasive. This
entails concerted efforts in countries where
large numbers of the world's 1.2 billion poor live. The top five
countries, in terms of numbers
of poor, are India (with 33 percent of the
world's poor), China (13 percent), Nigeria
(7 percent), Bangladesh (6 percent) and the
Democratic Republic of Congo (5 percent),
which together are home to nearly 760 million of the world's poor.
Adding another
five countries - Indonesia, Pakistan,
Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya - would
encompass almost 80 percent of the extreme
poor. "Hence, a sharp emphasis on these
countries will be central to ending extreme poverty, he said.

Posted by Chrisray

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