World Bank seeks commitments to poverty battle

Agence France-Presse

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The World Bank plans to press the international community to endorse its 2030 anti-poverty goals

ERADICATING POVERTY. The World Bank plans to press the international community to endorse its 2030 anti-poverty goals. Photo by AFP

WASHINGTON, USA – The World Bank will press the international community to endorse its 2030 anti-poverty goals at next week’s meeting with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Bank president Jim Yong Kim said on Friday, April 12.

“Our top priority for this meeting is simple and clear: We want to push the world to commit to ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity in countries worldwide,” Kim said in a conference call with reporters.

Kim noted that there have been significant strides in poverty reduction, especially thanks to China’s efforts. The level of extreme poverty has fallen from 42% of the world’s population to 21% over the past 25 years.

But he warned that further progress will be more challenging.

“The last mile is always the most difficult. We’re not even close,” he said.

In early April Kim, who took office in July 2012, unveiled a sweeping agenda aimed at reducing extreme poverty to 3% and raising the incomes of the poorest 40% in each country by 2030.

Kim expressed optimism that world finance chiefs will back his poverty initiative at the spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF that open on April 19.

The Bank is hoping that the governors of the Development Committee, the World Bank-IMF policy steering body, will endorse it, he said.

“If we get a strong endorsement from the governors for our strategy… we’re going to go on to present a real strategic plan that will cut across the World Bank Group.”

“For the first time in history we are proposing to put together an integrated strategy” for the Bank’s groups that provide lending and financing investment, he said.

“There’s just no way that we’re going to be able to achieve what we want to achieve for the developing countries if we think about it just in terms of what we can do with official development assistance.” – Rappler.com

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